Every once in a while, you’ll get a Windows error dialog with the title “TODO: " and the text "TODO: has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program." You'll be given the options of "Close the program" and "Debug the program".

When a developer starts a project using common development tools, he starts from a program stub provided by the dev tool. Microsoft provides a stub which includes a default exception handler. The default exception handler displays this dialog – mostly.

The default exception handler fills in the name/description of the program before it displays the error. But… the stub also includes a default program name/description. That default name/description is “TODO: ".

So this error is produced when the developer of an application couldn’t be bothered to update the default name/description provided by the stub.

OK. So how do I tell which program is throwing an error (and crashing)?

Open Task Manager. Look in the “Description” column. You’ll see the program name/description for every running program. The one with the description, “TODO: " -- that's your problem application. Look in the "Image Name" column and the "Command Line" column for clues as to what the program is.