What does HRESULT 0x80040E6A (SEC_E_BADTRUSTEEID) mean?

 
Previous Next
DB_E_OBJECTCREATIONLIMITREACHED SEC_E_NOTRUSTEEID

SEC_E_BADTRUSTEEID

Exact value and result class

SEC_E_BADTRUSTEEID has unsigned value 2147749482 (0x80040E6A) and signed 32-bit value -2147217814. AllStat describes it as “Trustee is invalid”. In this result, a security-administration call receives a trustee representation that is structurally invalid.

The high bit is set, so this result is a failure HRESULT. Its facility is 4 (FACILITY_ITF) and its low code is 3690 (0x0E6A). These fields identify an interface-defined result family; they do not identify the provider instance, method, object generation or partial effects.

Contract boundary

OLE DB security administration represents trustees, owners, groups, protected objects and access-entry lists as separate entities. A syntactically valid trustee can still be unknown to a provider, and an allowed permission set depends on the protected object type.

Investigation of this result should start with the provider security interface, effective data-source namespace and exact trustee or access-entry structure supplied. Capture it before ADO, ATL,.NET or a database abstraction layer replaces the native HRESULT with a generic exception.

Conditions that specifically lead to the result

  • Cause 1 for it: the trustee form or identifier type is unsupported.
  • Cause 2 for it: required name or SID data is missing.
  • Cause 3 for it: structure length, pointer or encoding is corrupt.

Evidence to collect

A useful it event records provider CLSID and version, process architecture, interface IID and method, object correlation ID, transaction state and the immediately preceding HRESULT. When recording it data involving SIDs, account names, groups, ACL contents and protected object identifiers, use types, lengths, hashes or redacted identifiers rather than secrets or complete business data.

  • Evidence 1 for it: trustee form and identifier type.
  • Evidence 2 for it: validated length and redacted identifier.
  • Evidence 3 for it: the exact security method and target object.

Diagnostic sequence

  1. Capture raw 0x80040E6A and symbolic it at the native call boundary.
  2. Identify the exact failing stage for it: a security-administration call receives a trustee representation that is structurally invalid.
  3. Retrieve all OLE DB error records for it before another COM call replaces thread error information.
  4. Compare the live object state and provider-granted capabilities with the input that produced it.
  5. Reduce the operation to the smallest case that preserves the same security contract.
  6. Apply one evidence-backed correction for it and verify that the result is not merely replaced by a neighboring HRESULT.

Corrective actions

  • Action 1 for it: build trustees with the documented structure contract.
  • Action 2 for it: validate names or SIDs before the provider call.
  • Action 3 for it: avoid casting unrelated security structures into the trustee field.

Retry and recovery

Retry rule for it: retry after constructing a syntactically valid trustee identifier. A it retry is safe only when the relevant input, object generation, capability or external state has changed. Before replaying a modifying call that returned it, determine whether rows, schema objects or URL resources were partially created or changed.

Do not turn it into an unbounded retry loop. Preserve cancellation for it and use a fresh provider object when the failed call may have left local state ambiguous.

Practical scenario

An ACL importer passes an empty name trustee after parsing a malformed record; rejecting it earlier prevents it. Keeping it with the method and object state makes this scenario diagnosable instead of reducing it to “database error”.

Difference from nearby HRESULT values

SEC_E_NOTRUSTEEID means a valid trustee is unknown to the data source, while it means the representation itself is invalid. Telemetry and remediation for it should keep these outcomes distinct.

Developer and operations guidance

Code handling it should release COM objects in ownership order, retain per-row, per-column or per-property statuses, and log granted capabilities rather than only requested options. While handling it, opaque values such as HACCESSOR, HROW, HCHAPTER, DBID components and provider handles must remain scoped to the object that issued them.

Operational dashboards for it should group by provider version, interface, method and normalized failure stage. A it event must not expose passwords, tokens, full connection strings, unrestricted command text or raw row contents.

Official Microsoft references

Looking for a different code? Search another status or error code.