What does Windows error code 1008 (ERROR_NO_TOKEN) mean?

 
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ERROR_NO_TOKEN

ERROR_NO_TOKEN (1008, 0x000003F0) usually means that code expected an impersonation token on a thread, but the thread is not currently impersonating any client. It does not mean that the process has no primary access token.

Primary and impersonation tokens are different

Every Windows process has a primary token that describes its normal security context. A thread can additionally receive an impersonation token while it is acting on behalf of a client. APIs such as OpenThreadToken operate on that optional thread token; they cannot return one when impersonation was never established or has already ended.

How to diagnose it

  • Check whether the call is supposed to use the client identity or the service or process identity.
  • Confirm that the call is made inside the intended impersonation scope and on the same thread that received the client token.
  • When the operation is intentionally performed as the process, open the process token instead of treating a missing thread token as an unexpected failure.
  • When the operation requires a client token, preserve the token lifetime and explicitly establish impersonation before making the call.

See Microsoft documentation for access tokens and OpenThreadToken.


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