What does HRESULT 0x80010117 (RPC_E_CALL_COMPLETE) mean?

 
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RPC_E_CALL_COMPLETE

COM call context was accessed after completion

RPC_E_CALL_COMPLETE is HRESULT 2147549463 (0x80010117) from winerror.h. AllStat describes it as “Call context cannot be accessed after call completed.” In the COM/RPC call control, message filtering, apartment routing, marshaling, security negotiation, or remote object lifetime, the code identifies a specific failure boundary and should not be replaced by a generic COM exception.

Telemetry should preserve this result as a separate outcome rather than merging it with unrelated COM or WinRT failures.

Where it is encountered

  • Cross-apartment or cross-process COM method invocation and activation. Record the interface, method, component version, thread, apartment, process, and correlation ID.
  • STA message filtering, reentrancy, call cancellation, timeout, or retry handling.
  • DCOM security initialization, proxy/stub marshaling, OBJREF processing, and server object lifetime.

The immediate focus for this HRESULT is attempted use of call-context, cancellation, impersonation, or security data after the corresponding RPC call has returned. Keep it attached to that operation; the same numeric severity outside the owning API does not supply enough context.

Decisive interpretation boundary

Before choosing recovery, verify that all context-dependent work is confined to the active call stack and asynchronous work copies only permitted immutable data. If this condition cannot be proven for this HRESULT, stop before consuming outputs or repeating side effects.

Also confirm that all observed objects, tokens, buffers, proxies, metadata files, or ACLs belong to the current operation generation and were not retained from an earlier attempt.

Correct handling and recovery

Move context access into the server method, snapshot allowed identifiers before return, and never retain call-context interfaces beyond their documented lifetime.

Repeat the operation after it only when the documented precondition, identity, apartment, object generation, buffer, or configuration has changed.

Lifetime, retry, and cleanup rules

After it, determine whether the current object, interface pointer, call context, token, stream, metadata reader, asynchronous operation, or access-control instance remains valid. Release only resources owned by the failing attempt, cancel callbacks through their documented mechanism, and avoid double close, double commit, repeated activation, or replay of a non-idempotent remote method.

The retry policy for this HRESULT should state the trigger, maximum attempts, cancellation owner, and reconciliation step for effects that may have completed elsewhere.

Difference from nearby HRESULTs

It is a lifetime violation after return; RPC_E_NO_CONTEXT means the current location has no associated call context at all.

Tests for this HRESULT should force both results and verify that object lifetime, output use, and user messaging differ.

Practical scenario

A queued audit task calls a context API after the COM method returns. The method captures the client SID and correlation ID before scheduling the task.

A regression test should reproduce it, assert the raw HRESULT and all relevant outputs, then correct only the decisive condition and verify the intended success or neighboring failure result.

References

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