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REGDB_E_INVALIDVALUE
Invalid value for registry
REGDB_E_INVALIDVALUE has hexadecimal value 0x80040153 (unsigned 2147746131, signed -2147221165). Windows reports “Invalid value for registry”. The narrow interpretation is that a required COM registration value exists but its data is invalid. The failing stage is parsing a server path, threading model, GUID, security descriptor, or other registration value.
API stage
COM registration is architecture-, scope-, and identity-sensitive. A key visible in Registry Editor is not proof that the failing process sees the same view or that the values form a coherent activation contract.
- Associate this result with one exact operation in CLSID/IID registry lookup, InprocServer32 or LocalServer32 metadata, interface proxy registration, package policy, and threading-model interpretation.
- Confirm that this result came from parsing a server path, threading model, GUID, security descriptor, or other registration value, rather than from cleanup or a wrapper that ran afterward.
Verification steps
- Identify the exact object, method, and lifecycle phase involved in parsing a server path, threading model, GUID, security descriptor, or other registration value.
- Capture value name, registry type, length, and sanitized contents.
- Compare the data with the owning installer manifest and documented COM key schema.
- Check expansion, quoting, Unicode encoding, and architecture-specific paths.
Interpretation limits
- It can result when a value has the wrong registry type or malformed text.
- It can result when an environment-expanded path or command line is truncated or incorrectly quoted.
- It can result when a deployment wrote a GUID, version, or policy value outside the accepted syntax.
Incident record
Recovery conditions
Correction. replace the malformed value through the supported installer or configuration tool and verify the complete registration subtree. Retry condition. Retry after correction; repeated activation against unchanged invalid data is deterministic. Before repeating the operation, complete or roll back the installer transaction, re-read the exact user or machine registry view, and discard class factories obtained from superseded registration.
Practical scenario
A LocalServer32 command contains an unmatched quote, so COM cannot parse the executable path; repairing the installer-authored value restores launch.
Difference from related HRESULTs
REGDB_E_KEYMISSING means data is absent; it means data is present but cannot be interpreted safely.
Developer and administrator guidance
References
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