NTSTATUS 128 (STATUS_ABANDONED_WAIT_0): meaning and diagnosis

Status / error code:		Category:

Constant name:
Source:		Operating System:
Description: The wait acquired the mutex at index 0 after its previous owning thread exited without releasing it.

Could be also:
Constant	Type	OS
ERROR_WAIT_NO_CHILDREN	Win32 error	Windows
ENETUNREACH	errno	Solaris
ENOTSOCK	errno	Windows
NMI_HARDWARE_FAILURE	BugCheck Code	Windows

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STATUS_WAIT_63	STATUS_ABANDONED_WAIT_63

STATUS_ABANDONED_WAIT_0

The first wait object is an abandoned mutex

An abandoned-wait result is not an ordinary signaled-object result. It means the selected object is a mutex whose owning thread terminated before releasing ownership. Windows grants ownership of the mutex to the waiting thread, but data protected by that mutex may have been left halfway through an update.

STATUS_ABANDONED_WAIT_0 identifies index zero of a multiple-object wait. Recovery code should validate protected persistent or shared state before continuing and should still release the mutex when ownership is no longer needed. Recreating the mutex or ignoring the result can hide the process or thread that abandoned the critical update.

What to inspect

Identify the mutex at array index zero and the process that previously owned it.
Validate protected state before treating the new ownership as safe.
Trace abnormal thread or process termination that occurred before the abandoned result.

References

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