When do these error occur? This error message generally appears when Express Scribe tries to load a bad dictation file. The "badness" is usually related to some form of corruption of the file - e.g. trying to load a dss file that has been recorded in LP mode rather than SP mode on a digital recorder. Express Scribe only supports dss files recorded in SP mode, and will crash with the above error message every time an attempt is made to load an LP file.