[drunkenfly]

This is by far craziest I've seen: "Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords" [1]

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/kb/276304

Edit: typo

[username223]

"Note that the number of required characters changes from 17,145 to 18,770 with the installation of SP1."

Wow. The story behind the extra 1625 characters must be good.

[Someone]

My $0.02 is on a dull explanation: the max length and #remembered parameters must be configurable and/or depend on the access method, and the printf-like call that creates the message string must have passed erroneous pointers pointing into some DLL. When that DLL changed, or when another DLL changed in size, causing the DLL to move, the pointers pointed to different, but still constant data.