Err Utility Still the Best for Researching OS Error Codes

Very few things are built to last these days. When my parents were my age, companies were proud to build things that wouldn't break down. Today, most manufactured items are created with the intent that they will need to be replaced in 5 years or so to supply a steady revenue stream. They are built so they last long enough to reach the end of warranty and then the trouble comes. So, it's good to see when something older is not just still useful, but still excels in value.

Either I totally forgot about this utility, or just thought it was irrelevant because of its intended focus and age, but a thread on the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit email list brought me back to the tool.

Built to help with Exchange Server messages, Err.exe works for any decimal and hexadecimal error codes for Windows. The last version was released in May of 2008, and shows as supported by Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, but it still works great on all subsequent Windows operating system versions – even Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

The utility is a single, command-line .exe that, when run and supplied an error code, will give a lot more information about the error message, as shown:

You can get it here: Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up

Windows error messages can be painful because they really provide little additional information about the actual source of the problem. Err.exe helps fix that and can be used to better identify where to look when things go wrong.

Err.exe can be used with the following parameters: