"/e: Event not found," looks like a shell response -- if you are using the wrong kind of quotes or forgetting quotes altogether. Bash gives me "bash: !/e": event not found" -- which is a bit more helpful. The shell fails to expand the metacharacter '!'

(Of course, bash accepts either quotes, which is also kinda helpful.)

The second time -- did you do this with some shell function to recall previous command (arrow-up or C-p or whatever)? If so, perhaps the results of the '!!' are remembered as well, perhaps mangled by the subsequent failure?

Let me guess -- did your previous command look something like "vi freakA"? :-)

The Sidhekin, preferring Emacs to vi, but thankful it was not notepad :-)