What does HRESULT 0x8004255E (VDS_E_INVALID_DRIVE_LETTER) mean?

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the requested drive-letter value or syntax is invalid for the VDS operation.

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VDS_E_EXTEND_MULTIPLE_DISKS_NOT_SUPPORTED	VDS_E_INVALID_DRIVE_LETTER_COUNT

VDS_E_INVALID_DRIVE_LETTER

VDS_E_INVALID_DRIVE_LETTER means the supplied drive letter is outside the accepted format or range. VDS drive-letter operations expect a valid local drive designator, not an arbitrary path, volume GUID path or mounted-folder string.

Validate the access-path type before calling VDS

Normalize the letter to the expected form and reject nonalphabetic values.
Use mounted-folder APIs for directory access paths instead of passing them as drive letters.
Check QueryDriveLetters separately for availability after syntax validation.

This error is different from VDS_E_DRIVE_LETTER_NOT_FREE: a syntactically valid letter can still be occupied. Keep these stages separate in user feedback. If the application accepts paths from configuration, parse and classify them before constructing the VDS request.

QueryDriveLetters · Drive-letter properties · IVdsVolumeMF

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