Back in the days of limited memory and general user-unfriendliness, cryptic error messsages were common place and understandable only by the computing elite. As time moved on, error messages became friendlier and geared towards the user by hiding the cryptic error codes and debug information. Microsoft even announced this as a key design concept of Windows 7 compared to earlier versions.

However, some software manufacturers have other ideas, especially with SIMS (connection error spouting more verbal diahorrea then useful text) and Fronter (Unknown error occurring when uploading a SCORM Course that Pearson themselves provided on a CD).

Feel free to comment with your own examples.