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STG_E_SEEKERROR
What a seek failure tells you
STG_E_SEEKERROR is raised when Structured Storage cannot move to the required position in a stream or backing store. It can appear while reading a compound document even before an application reaches the payload it ultimately wants. That makes it a useful boundary: the issue may be a lower-level stream, file-system, or container-allocation problem rather than a parsing failure in the document’s visible content.
Compound files represent streams through sector chains. A reader may need to seek repeatedly while following directory, FAT, mini-FAT, and stream data. A damaged chain, truncated file, interrupted download, or unreliable backing medium can therefore surface as a seek-related HRESULT, but the code alone does not identify which layer failed.
How to diagnose it safely
- Try a local copy of the file; a different result on a network or removable location changes the investigation.
- Compare file size and hash with a known-good source before attempting repair.
- Inspect the container read-only with an independent parser such as POIFS or libolecf to see whether the failure is reproducible outside the original application.
- Preserve the original file. Re-saving through an application can overwrite evidence of the first failure.
References
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