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CO_E_ACESINWRONGORDER
ACL access-denied and access-allowed entries are in the wrong order
CO_E_ACESINWRONGORDER is HRESULT 2147549498 (0x8001013A) from winerror.h. AllStat describes it as “Not all the DENY_ACCESS ACEs are arranged in front of the GRANT_ACCESS ACEs in the stream.” In the COM IAccessControl, DCOM client identity, trustee translation, token inspection, security descriptor, ACL, or serialization workflow, the code identifies a specific failure boundary and should not be replaced by a generic COM exception.
A generic “operation failed” message is insufficient for it because the recovery decision depends on the exact lifecycle, security, marshaling, or state condition.
Decisive interpretation boundary
Before choosing recovery, verify that ACE type, inheritance, object-specific scope, trustee, and original order are preserved for safe canonicalization. That boundary prevents this result from being misclassified as corruption, network failure, or a reason for an unsafe automatic retry.
Also confirm that all observed objects, tokens, buffers, proxies, metadata files, or ACLs belong to the current operation generation and were not retained from an earlier attempt.
Where it is encountered
- IAccessControl initialization, access checks, owner/trustee processing, and serialized ACL persistence. Record the interface, method, component version, thread, apartment, process, and correlation ID.
- Server-side DCOM impersonation, client blanket inspection, token and SID lookup.
- Security descriptor construction, DACL canonicalization, file-backed policy storage, or legacy NetAccess migration.
The immediate focus for it is a serialized or constructed DACL that is not in canonical order, especially deny ACEs placed after grants they should override. Keep it attached to that operation; the same numeric severity outside the owning API does not supply enough context.
Correct handling and recovery
Rebuild the ACL using security APIs that produce canonical order, then verify effective access for representative tokens before applying it.
Repeat the operation after it only when the documented precondition, identity, apartment, object generation, buffer, or configuration has changed.
Difference from nearby HRESULTs
It is ordering; CO_E_DECODEFAILED means the ACL stream cannot be decoded reliably at all.
The distinction around it should be represented explicitly in control flow and operational dashboards.
Lifetime, retry, and cleanup rules
After it, determine whether the current object, interface pointer, call context, token, stream, metadata reader, asynchronous operation, or access-control instance remains valid. Release only resources owned by the failing attempt, cancel callbacks through their documented mechanism, and avoid double close, double commit, repeated activation, or replay of a non-idempotent remote method.
The retry policy for it should state the trigger, maximum attempts, cancellation owner, and reconciliation step for effects that may have completed elsewhere.
Developer and administrator guidance
When it crosses native, managed, scripting, RPC, or WinRT projection boundaries, preserve the unsigned 32-bit HRESULT. Unit tests for it should assert the code-specific postcondition and resource ownership, not merely that an exception was thrown.
After it, avoid broad permission grants or system-wide resets unless code-specific evidence proves a global configuration problem. Define who owns retry, cancellation, cleanup, policy changes, package repair, and user-facing messaging for it.
Practical scenario
A policy editor appends a deny ACE after an existing allow ACE for the same user. Canonical rebuild moves explicit denies first and regression tests confirm denial.
A regression test should reproduce it, assert the raw HRESULT and all relevant outputs, then correct only the decisive condition and verify the intended success or neighboring failure result.
References
- Microsoft: IAccessControl
- Microsoft: IAccessControl::IsAccessAllowed
- Microsoft: AccessCheck
- Microsoft: LookupAccountSidW
- Microsoft: LookupAccountNameW
- Microsoft: access control lists
- Microsoft: canonical ACE order
- Microsoft: HRESULT values
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