What does Windows error code 11003 (WSANO_RECOVERY) mean?

 
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WSATRY_AGAIN WSANO_DATA

WSANO_RECOVERY

WSANO_RECOVERY reports a non-recoverable failure from the legacy Winsock resolver. It should not be interpreted as a generic “DNS is down” message. Windows documents it separately from WSATRY_AGAIN; asynchronous lookup documentation associates it with failures such as malformed requests, refusal, or unsupported operations.

How it differs from nearby resolver errors

WSAHOST_NOT_FOUND points to a missing name, while WSANO_DATA means a valid name lacks the requested record type. WSATRY_AGAIN leaves room for a delayed retry. WSANO_RECOVERY instead suggests that the request, resolver policy, or resolver implementation must be examined before retrying unchanged.

What to check

  • Capture the queried FQDN, record type, resolver address, and raw DNS response code where possible.
  • Check for malformed names, blocked query types, restrictive split-DNS policy, or a resolver that does not implement the needed operation.
  • For new code, prefer GetAddrInfo and preserve its detailed failure context rather than collapsing all lookup failures into one retry rule.

Microsoft: gethostbyname results · Microsoft: GetAddrInfo · IETF: DNS response codes · IETF: DNS negative caching


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