What does HRESULT 0x80010139 (CO_E_EXCEEDSYSACLLIMIT) mean?

 
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CO_E_FAILEDTOCLOSEHANDLE CO_E_ACESINWRONGORDER

CO_E_EXCEEDSYSACLLIMIT

ACL contains more ACEs than the system supports

CO_E_EXCEEDSYSACLLIMIT is HRESULT 2147549497 (0x80010139) from winerror.h. AllStat describes it as “The number of ACEs in an ACL exceeds the system limit.” In the COM IAccessControl, DCOM client identity, trustee translation, token inspection, security descriptor, ACL, or serialization workflow, the code identifies a specific failure boundary and should not be replaced by a generic COM exception.

A generic “operation failed” message is insufficient for it because the recovery decision depends on the exact lifecycle, security, marshaling, or state condition.

Where it is encountered

  • IAccessControl initialization, access checks, owner/trustee processing, and serialized ACL persistence. Record the interface, method, component version, thread, apartment, process, and correlation ID.
  • Server-side DCOM impersonation, client blanket inspection, token and SID lookup.
  • Security descriptor construction, DACL canonicalization, file-backed policy storage, or legacy NetAccess migration.

The immediate focus for it is a generated access-control list whose entry count or total size exceeds platform or consuming implementation limits. Keep this result 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 duplicate, inherited, redundant, and obsolete ACEs are identified before any permissions are removed. The decisive boundary for it determines whether the same object can continue, a new object is required, or policy must change.

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.

Difference from nearby HRESULTs

It is capacity exhaustion; CO_E_ACESINWRONGORDER concerns canonical ordering of an otherwise representable ACL.

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

Correct handling and recovery

Canonicalize and consolidate equivalent entries, use group-based authorization, and redesign overly granular policy. Preserve effective-access tests during compaction.

Reconcile partial output and server-side effects before attempting the operation again.

Practical scenario

A deployment adds one ACE per user until the DACL exceeds limits. Administration creates a security group and replaces thousands of user ACEs with one group ACE.

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.

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 it should state the trigger, maximum attempts, cancellation owner, and reconciliation step for effects that may have completed elsewhere.

References

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