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CO_E_REMOTE_COMMUNICATION_FAILURE
COM could not communicate with the remote server computer
CO_E_REMOTE_COMMUNICATION_FAILURE is HRESULT 2147500061 (0x8000401D) from winerror.h. The documented description is “This computer was unable to communicate with the computer providing the server.” The value must be interpreted at DCOM activation or method invocation across a machine boundary.
The client could not establish or maintain communication with the computer hosting the COM server. Keep the symbolic name beside the raw hexadecimal value so later analysis does not collapse the result into an unrelated COM family.
Where the result appears
- This result may surface in DCOM activation or method invocation across a machine boundary.
Determine the object and lifecycle phase that owned this result; a UI symptom cannot establish whether the origin was the caller, proxy, runtime, server, or metadata producer.
Typical causes and interpretation
Common cause categories are: DNS resolves incorrectly; RPC ports are blocked; the server is offline; network segmentation or authentication policy prevents communication. Evaluate these branches independently and require evidence from the owning API before promoting one branch to the root cause.
Key distinction: the client could not establish or maintain communication with the computer hosting the COM server.
Correct handling and recovery
The appropriate recovery is to verify name resolution, reachability, endpoint mapper and dynamic RPC policy, then retry only idempotent calls after confirming server state. The owner of retry must define idempotency, refreshed state, maximum attempts, backoff, and cancellation responsibility.
After this result, apply the API-specific validity rules to outputs and release only resources whose ownership transferred during this attempt.
Practical scenario
A management console resolves an old server address after a migration; correcting DNS restores DCOM activation.
A regression test should force the relevant precondition, assert native outputs, fix only that condition, and confirm the expected neighboring result.
Difference from related HRESULTs
RPC_E_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE is a common call-level endpoint error; it is an activation-oriented COM result.
References
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