What does HRESULT 0x80342006 (ERROR_NDIS_DOT11_AP_BAND_CURRENTLY_NOT_AVAILABLE) mean?

ERROR_NDIS_DOT11_AP_BAND_CURRENTLY_NOT_AVAILABLE

ERROR_NDIS_DOT11_AP_BAND_CURRENTLY_NOT_AVAILABLE (0x80342006) means that the WLAN interface cannot start an AP in the requested band at the time of the request. Unlike the channel-specific status, this is a band-level result: it does not identify one failed channel or tell the caller which channel in the band would work.

Band selection is a broader constraint

A band request can be supplied directly by software or derived from an automatic selection policy. The effective answer still depends on the adapter capabilities, current operation mode and radio state. A device may expose more than one PHY and may advertise separate attributes for station, virtual Wi-Fi and extensible AP operation, so a scan that sees a band is not by itself evidence that the adapter can host an AP in that band now.

Compare the four related statuses

• AP_BAND_CURRENTLY_NOT_AVAILABLE is a temporary decision about the requested band.
• AP_CHANNEL_CURRENTLY_NOT_AVAILABLE narrows that temporary decision to one channel.
• AP_BAND_NOT_ALLOWED and AP_CHANNEL_NOT_ALLOWED explicitly identify regulatory reasons instead of temporary availability.

Useful evidence for diagnosis

• Preserve whether the caller selected a band explicitly or left the choice to the WLAN stack.
• Record the supported PHYs, AP operation capability and radio state reported by the adapter before the start request.
• Check whether another requested role, connection change or scan operation was still in progress when the AP start was attempted.
• For a driver or service, log the selected band and the later per-channel decision separately; otherwise a band-level failure hides the useful lower-level reason.

Why blindly falling back can be misleading

Changing to another band may change reach, throughput, regulatory constraints and compatibility with clients. It is appropriate only when the product policy permits it and the adapter reports that band as a valid AP option. A retry loop that alternates bands without collecting the driver state can turn an intermittent condition into an opaque configuration problem.

Microsoft: Hosted Network virtualization and SoftAP roles

Microsoft: Native 802.11 attributes, PHYs and ExtAP operation

Linux Wireless: regulatory database frequency ranges and bandwidth rules

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