What does HRESULT 0x80270013 (NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT) mean?

NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT

The System Health Validator timed out

NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT is HRESULT 0x80270013 (signed decimal -2144927725, unsigned decimal 2150039571). AllStat, using winerror.h, describes it as “SHV timed out on the request.” The value has failure severity, facility 0x27, and code field 0x0013.

This is a legacy Network Access Protection result: Microsoft states that NAP is unavailable starting with Windows 10 and that current Windows Server releases do not include the former NAP, HRA, and HCAP roles; use the code for supported legacy systems, archived telemetry, compatibility components, or migrations rather than assuming a modern machine should expose the old platform.

The asynchronous validation deadline expired

INapSystemHealthValidator::Validate receives hintTimeOutInMsec. Microsoft states that the default for all SHVs is 2000 milliseconds and that an SHV returning E_PENDING must call OnComplete on a separate thread within that interval; otherwise the response is dropped. NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT records that deadline failure. It is an availability result, not a healthy/unhealthy decision.

Why validation misses the deadline

• The SHV performs synchronous network or database I/O before returning E_PENDING.
• A backend posture service is slow, unavailable, or retrying internally beyond the NAP timeout.
• Thread-pool starvation delays either validation work or the OnComplete callback.
• The SHV finishes but calls OnComplete on the wrong request generation after the original deadline.
• A global timeout was reduced for all registered SHVs without validating the slowest supported backend.

Timing evidence

• Record Validate entry/return, E_PENDING decision, hintTimeOutInMsec, backend milestones, SetSoHResponse, and OnComplete times.
• Separate queue delay, CPU time, network time, and callback scheduling delay.
• Capture SHV process health, thread-pool depth, outstanding validations, and dependency endpoint status.
• Track whether a late response was dropped and whether it later caused NAP_E_NOT_PENDING.

Meeting the contract

• Return E_PENDING promptly before slow I/O and perform validation on a controlled asynchronous path.
• Set dependency timeouts shorter than the NAP deadline so the SHV has time to construct a failure-category response.
• Bound concurrent validations and cancel obsolete backend work when the request expires.
• Measure each SHV before changing the global timeout, because a nondefault value affects all registered validators.

Difference from nearby NAP results

NAP_E_TOO_MANY_CALLS is an admission/concurrency failure that may be caused by accumulated slow validations. NAP_E_NOT_PENDING is what a late completion can encounter after timeout. A compliance-result failure means the validator completed and judged the machine unhealthy; NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT means it could not produce a timely verdict.

Retry and recovery

Do not apply a late SoH response to the expired request. Policy should map the validator communication failure according to configured failure-category handling. A new validation may be attempted with backoff after dependency recovery, but repeated automatic retries under the same overload can worsen the timeout storm.

Practical scenario

An antivirus SHV queries a remote inventory database whose latency rises to five seconds. Validate returns E_PENDING, but the 2000-ms NAP deadline expires first and NAP_E_SHV_TIMEOUT is reported. Adding a shorter backend timeout and returning a component-failure response within the NAP window makes policy behavior deterministic.

References

• Microsoft: NAP error constants
• Microsoft: Validate timeout contract
• Microsoft: OnComplete
• Microsoft: SHV configuration interfaces

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