The original definitions of "hard error" and "soft error" were for disks and go back to the early 1970s at least. A soft error was a recoverable error that could be handled by re-reading the disk sector. A hard error was a permanent disk error that could not be recovered.
Interesting they were actual graphical dialogs with bouse support in 16-bit windows, but you'd get a text-mode blue screen on Win95.
Happened a lot to me due to faulty CD-ROM drive. D: can not be read. Abort/retry/fail.
What was even the difference between Abort and Fail?
I guess the NT equivalent are those error popups that come out of SYSTEM and similar accounts, yet somehow manage to get on the interactive user's session display. They usually have styling that's several Windows versions out of date.
<p><pre><code> “‘Abort, Retry, Fail?’ was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we’d remind them: if you see this message, always choose ‘Retry.'”
— Bad’l Ron, Wakener, Morgan Polysoft (SMAC)</code></pre>
Such errors were called "critical errors" on DOS. They were called critical because the app could not continue execution unless the error was resolved. Windows seems to have picked a softer name.