*** is not a valid Windows network message number.

It is always fun in Windows-land. Fun, fun, fun. [thinkingofmyhappyplace] ;)

I have a really good buddy who works at Micro$oft and being a good guy he passed along a tip about the Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up tool.

Turns out it "determines error values from decimal and hexadecimal error codes in (all) Microsoft Windows® operating systems." not just for Exchange.

Now that would have been a useful thing for Micro$oft to hype a little more than leading us to believe that this little tool was just for Exchange... [sigh] don't get me started... one day I'll regale you on multi-terabyte enterprise DFSr implementations held up by Micro$oft "unpublished" KBs.

The Error Code Lookup tool can look up one or more values at a time. If available, informational data associated with the value(s) will also be shown (see below).

Cmd line output from err /?

Table ? could not be found.

USAGE: err {value} [value] [value] ...
where must be of one of the following forms:
1. decorated hex (0x54f)
2. implicit hex (54f)
3. ambiguous (1359)
4. exact string (=ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR)
5. substring (:INTERNAL_ERROR)

All values on the command line will be looked up in our internal tables and presented to you. If available, informational data associated with the value(s) will also be shown (see below). All tables are searched by default, but you can restrict the output to those tables you deem appropriate by adding "/" to the beginning of the cmd-line.

Example:

> err /winerror.h /ntstatus.h 0
# winerror.h selected.
# ntstatus.h selected.
# for hex 0x0 / decimal 0 :
STATUS_WAIT_0 ntstatus
ERROR_SUCCESS winerror
# The operation completed successfully.
NO_ERROR winerror
SEC_E_OK winerror
S_OK winerror
# 5 matches found for "0"

Last compiled on Mar 31 2003 14:39:19.
This app has support derived from the following headers and privates
...
There are currently 19871 return codes registered from 172 sources.

Cmd line output from err 5000

# for decimal 5000 / hex 0x1388 :
SPMEVENT_PACKAGE_FAULT lsapmsgs.mc
# The supplemental credentials for security package %1 for
# user %2%3 could not
# updated. The return code is the data.
# for hex 0x5000 / decimal 20480 :
CCERR_CHOOSECOLORCODES cderr.h
# 2 matches found for "5000"

After learning about this tool and playing with it, I did some more googling and found some additional information on the subject.

Check out To err is Admin and Information about the err.exe tool I use to look up error codes when debugging setup issues for more information.