overyourhead

Microsoft programmers have a sense of humour - just...
Buried away in computer code can be some interesting insights into software programmers thinking. And inevitably the software superpower we know and love as Microsoft doesn't always manage to catch these little gems before they make it into the wild. So I wonder who came up with this dialog box text?

In Windows XP is a dynamic link library called MSGINA.DLL. If you open MSGINA.DLL with an editor, select DIALOG, go to 2210, then select 1033 you will see (in the text part) what you see below)

2210 DIALOG 0, 0, 274, 200
STYLE DS_FIXEDSYS | DS_MODALFRAME | DS_CENTER | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU CAPTION "Shutdown Event Tracker" LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
FONT 8, "MS Shell Dlg"
{
CONTROL 22, -1, STATIC, SS_ICON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 13, 7, 21, 20
CONTROL "&Why did the computer shut down unexpectedly?", -1, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 44, 7, 173, 10
CONTROL "", 2211, COMBOBOX, CBS_DROPDOWNLIST | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_VSCROLL | WS_TABSTOP, 44, 20, 173, 57
CONTROL "The computer got very poorly and decided to end it's own suffering.", 2212, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 44, 40, 173, 33
CONTROL "&Problem Id", -1, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 44, 80, 173, 10
CONTROL "", 2214, EDIT, ES_LEFT | ES_AUTOHSCROLL | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_BORDER | WS_TABSTOP, 44, 90, 173, 12
CONTROL "&Comment", -1, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 44, 106, 173, 10
CONTROL "", 2213, EDIT, ES_LEFT | ES_MULTILINE | ES_AUTOVSCROLL | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_BORDER | WS_TABSTOP, 44, 116, 173, 53
CONTROL "OK", 1, BUTTON, BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP | WS_TABSTOP, 217, 176, 50, 14
}