Critical Errors

OS/2 watches for physical errors during input and output operations. Physical errors are those due to hardware problems, such as trying to read a floppy disk while the drive door is open.

These errors are called critical errors because OS/2, CMD.EXE, or your application program cannot proceed until the error is resolved.

When a critical error occurs, you will see a popup window asking you to choose one of four error handling options. The message comes from OS/2 or CMD.EXE, and will vary slightly depending on whether you are in full-screen or windowed mode. You can respond with a mouse click or menu selection. The options and their meanings are similar in all cases:

Return error code to program.	Tell the program that the operation failed. This option returns an error code to CMD.EXE or to the application program that was running when the error occurred. CMD.EXE generally stops the current ommand when an operation fails.
End program/command/operation.	Choose this option to stop the program that was running when the error occurred and abort CMD.EXE.
Retry command or operation.	Choose this option if you have corrected the problem.
Display help.	Display further information on the error.