When you write software, you try to make the error messages as informative as possible. You want troubleshooting to be easy – you’ll probably have to troubleshoot the problems! However, you always end up with the misc bucket. The “This error couldn’t possibly arise” error. The “We Dunno” error.

I’ve been working with SqlServerCE on a project at work. (I’m impressed with it so far – it’s a tiny relational DB in a very small footprint.) I hit the SQLCE “We Dunno” error. First sign was the informative message: “An internal error occurred. [ ID = 2034 ]”. Native Error 28574.
My SQLCEResultSet was behaving very strangely: A call to results.GetName(0) gives me the expected name of “Apples”, results.GetName(1) gives me “Oranges”.
Calling results.GetString(0) throws the error, and results.GetString(1) gives me “Granny Smith”. Odd!

A little digging on the MS SQLCe Books online gave me this:

If you experience any errors with the prefix “Internal error” while you use SQL Server Compact Edition, try the operation again as the error might not reproduce. If the error appears again, you should immediately contact Microsoft Product Support Services. The internal errors cannot be resolved by common troubleshooting techniques.

In other words, “We Dunno” – but we’re sure interested in how you got there….

But wait, there's more

• Just kidding, nothing's related to this.

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