This article was published on January 12, 2013

This is the funniest Windows error message you’ve ever seen


This is the funniest Windows error message you’ve ever seen

I have always found BSOD errors on large screens to be amusing, but there was never any WTF factor for me as I had experienced many and knew they are fairly easy to figure out. This is different.

Late on Friday I spotted a tweet from F-Secure CRO Mikko Hypponen that I found absolutely hilarious. He had posted it in the morning, and it essentially it showed a Windows Phone with a standard error message.

Here’s the line that caught his eye: “Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.” Really, and where exactly would one do that?

Check it out for yourself:

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

one

My colleagues immediately suggested that it was probably fake. I looked at it again, and quickly agreed, thinking that I was quite a fool to think otherwise.

Yet later that day, WMPoweruser dug into the story and found that a user by the name of dantist over on the Pocket PC forums had experienced the same problem with his Lumia 920 on Monday:

two

Coincidence? I think not!

A bit more searching on Twitter and it turns out dantist, or rather Johnny Ruokokoski, had tweeted the above image on Wednesday. After a push from another user, the Windows Phone Support account go involved, helping solve the mystery:

So there you have it. If you’re messing around with your Windows Phone device, you might get this amusing error. As WMPoweruser put it, this is a pretty good “to prove that Windows Phone 8 runs on the NT Kernel,” in case you were having doubts.

See also – Top 5 Windows Error Messages and Their Solutions

Image credit: Mark Seymour

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with