How You Might See the 404 Error.

404 Not Found error messages are frequently customized by individual websites. You can see some of the more creatively designed 404 errors I've seen in my 20 Best 404 Error Pages Ever slideshow.

So, keep in mind that the 404 error may show up in just about any way imaginable depending on what website it's shown from.

Here are some common ways in which you might see the HTTP 404 error displayed:

"404 Error"
"404 Not Found"
"Error 404"
"The requested URL [URL] was not found on this server."
"HTTP 404"
"Error 404 Not Found"
"404 File or Directory Not Found"
"HTTP 404 Not Found"
"404 Page Not Found"

404 Not Found error messages can appear in any browser and in any operating system. Most 404 Not Found errors display inside the Internet browser window just as webpages do.


In Internet Explorer, the message The webpage cannot be found usually indicates an HTTP 404 Internal Server Error but a 400 Bad Request error is another possibility. You can check to see which error IE is referring to by checking for either 404 or 400 in the title bar.


404 errors received when opening links via Microsoft Office applications generate a The Internet site reports that the item you requested could not be found (HTTP/1.0 404) message inside the MS Office program.


When Windows Update produces a 404 error, it appears as a code 0x80244019 or as the message WU_E_PT_HTTP_STATUS_NOT_FOUND.