Abort, Retry, Fail?

This article is about the error message. For the EP by White Town, see >Abort, Retry, Fail?_.

MS-DOS prompts "Abort, Retry, Fail?" after being commanded to list a directory with no diskette in the drive using the dir command.

"Abort, Retry, Fail?" (or "Abort, Retry, Ignore?") is an error message found in DOS operating systems, which prompts the end-user for a course of action to follow. Although an improvement over CP/M,[1] the message has been cited as an example of poor usability in computer user interfaces.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hughes_1982_MS-DOS was invoked but never defined (see the help page).