... while installing a game for a friend on his new XP box we encountered this error message.

“Catastrophic Error”

Someone at Microsoft has a sense of humour. The game did eventually install after I copied it to his HD.

Anyone else seen this one?

No, but close. The first bit of software that I tried to install into XP Pro was AVG (version 5.something). I got a popup that said the software was not compatible with XP, and had the option to abort the installation. I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

The install failed part way through, there was a memory dump and XP crashed. No BSOD, the laptop rebooted itself and I got that screen that gives you the option to go into Safe mode, boot normally, etc. I chose a normal boot-up. XP Pro recovered during the boot and has been fine ever since. I'm guessing that XP was protecting itself.

The latest version of AVG works just fine with XP, once I went to the bother to download it.

Years ago, while working on a system of machine tools, partially controlled by a VAX mainframe, I was looking over a list of status messages used in the system. One seemed a tad ominous: "End of the world, Task bailing out".