Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

You have probably encountered your share of errors in Windows. You think things are going fine and all of a sudden an error occurs and a Windows error code displays on the screen. What does the error mean? Generally, at this point, you have to go to Google and do a search for the error code, hoping you find an explanation that helps.

However, there are two free tools that make it easier to find out what the cryptic error code means. We tested both tools in Windows XP and Windows 7 and they worked in both versions.

The Windows Error Code Lookup Tool (ErrMsg)

The first tool is called the Windows Error Code Lookup Tool (ErrMsg). The tool is portable and does not need to be installed.

Download the Windows Error Code Lookup Tool from

http://www.favessoft.com/downloads.html.

The Windows Error Code Lookup Tool is available towards the bottom of the page.

Once you have downloaded the tool, unzip the file to a directory and double-click on the ErrMsg.exe file to open the program.

Enter the code for the error in the edit box on the ErrMsg dialog box and click Error Msg button.

The Error Message Lookup dialog box displays a description for the specified error code. Click OK to close the dialog box.

To close the ErrMsg dialog box, click the X button in the upper, right corner of the dialog box.

The Windows Error Lookup Tool (WELT)

The Windows Error Lookup Tool (WELT) works similarly to the ErrMsg tool. However, WELT also allows you to enter notes for each error code so you can remind yourself which programs have given you which errors.

Download the Windows Error Lookup Tool from

http://www.gunnerinc.com/downloads.htm.

The Windows Error Lookup Tool is also a portable tool and does not need to be installed. Simply unzip the file you downloaded and double-click on the welt.exe file to start the program.

On the Windows Error Lookup Tool dialog box that displays, enter the error code you want to look up in the Error # edit box and press Enter. Information about the error code displays. You can enter information about what you were doing when the error occurred in the Note edit box and click Save Note for future reference.

The Windows Error Lookup Tool works with regular Windows Errors (decimal and hex), signed error numbers, HRESULTS, NTSTATUS codes and STOP Errors. WELT does not work with certain errors from non system modules. To select an error type, click the arrow on the drop-down list to the right of the Error # edit box and select an option from the list.

An HRESULT error code is one that starts with 0x (that’s zero-x) and then 8 digits.  For example E_FAIL is the hex number 0×80000008 and returns the string “unspecified error” since it’s a catch-all COM or ActiveX error that just means the operation failed.

A STOP Error, also called a Blue Screen of Death (abbreviated BSOD or BSoD), displays when an error is so serious that Windows must stop completely. It is a blue, full screen error that often displays after a serious system crash. STOP errors are usually hardware or driver related.

NTSTATUS errors are not that common and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available online about them. If you do get an NTSTATUS error, there is a chart available on Microsoft’s site for converting NTSTATUS errors to Win32 errors. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/113996.

The following are valid error number formats and will display the same error description.

• Win32 Error: 1
• Win32 Error Hex: 0×1 or 0×00000001
• Signed: -2147024895
• COM Error (HRESULT): 0×80070001

The notes entered for the various error codes are saved in the WELT Notes directory in the same directory as welt.exe, in a subdirectory for your current username.

You can delete all the notes for a specific error code by entering the error code number in the Error # edit box, pressing Enter, and then clicking the Delete Note button.

NOTE: If you only want to delete part of the note, highlight the part of the note you want to delete, press the Backspace or the Delete key and click Save Note to resave the modified note.

If you get a Windows error code in hexadecimal format, be sure to enter “0x” (without the quotes) before the value in the Error # edit box. As mentioned earlier in this post, that’s a zero before the x, not the letter O.

You can browse through the notes entered for the various error codes you have entered. To do this, click the red circle with the X in the upper, left corner of the Windows Error Lookup Tool dialog box to access the menu and select Browse Notes.

The Note Browser dialog box displays. The error codes that have notes are listed in different sections for the different error types. Click the plus sign next to an error type to see the list of error codes with notes. Click on an error code number to view the notes for that error code. You can modify notes on the Note Browser. Use the Save Note button if you have modified a note or the Delete Note button to delete all the notes for a specific error code.

To close the Windows Error Lookup Tool, select Close from the menu.

If there is an error number the Windows Error Lookup Tool does not understand, you can send the text from the error message dialog box to the creator of the tool. To do this, simply press Ctrl + C when the error message dialog box is active and then you can paste the text of the message into a text editor to save or email program to send to gunner@gunnerinc.com.

Now, when you encounter an error in Windows, you don’t have to feel quite as lost. It may actually be an error that is easy to fix, but without knowing what the error means, you don’t know how to start fixing it.

You can get a description for most Windows errors using one of these two tools. Since each tool is portable, you can carry them around with you on a USB flash drive and use them at home, work, and even at a friend’s house when they encounter an error and ask you for help fixing it.

by Lori Kaufman