OS X Error Codes and What to Do With Them
Once in a while I get a phone call with a question much like this:
Customer: “I wanted to copy some files, but it doesn’t work!”
Me: “OK, do you get an error of some kind?”
Customer: “Yes, it says: Error 33″
Me: “Oh, OK, that helps” (to be honest I don’t have a clue because I don’t know every error code in OS X)
Most of the time after talking with the client I finally figure out that it’s a full disk or some of the files are corrupt, or something else, either way I get it fixed! Still I thought to myself; “Need to digg a little deeper into this error code thing”.
So I (finally) did and today I got pointed to a very nice overview on all the error codes in OS X. It’s an Apple document which gives you a good idea on what the error means. Just follow the list and you get pointed in the right direction.
This could be very helpful when helping clients out. I’m going to learn some fairly common errors so that I can impress my clients by saying…
Me: “Ahh, error the good ‘ol -34. It means that your disk is full. Time to do some spring cleaning on your harddisk”
Client: “Wow, you are amazing!” (client thinks: “I have the best computer engineer in the world”)
Me (thinks): “Need to increase my hourly fees”
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Tags: Apple, Apple Documents, Codes, Error, Manual, OS X, Problems
Thanks for this document. I’m starting to do a lot more work with Mac clients and this will definitely help out.
FYI: In your example, error code -31 doesn’t exist according to this document.