| Previous | Next |
| STATUS_CORRUPT_SYSTEM_FILE | STATUS_WMI_READ_ONLY |
STATUS_DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT_ERROR
The alignment fault could not be treated as a warning
This code is the error-severity counterpart to STATUS_DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT. It indicates that the access did not merely produce a warning or a fix-up opportunity; the operation failed under the active architecture or execution context. The underlying programming causes remain similar: invalid pointer arithmetic, packed data dereferenced directly, damaged pointers, or ABI disagreement between modules.
Preserve the distinction between the warning and error values in telemetry. A compatibility layer that maps both to one generic access violation can hide whether Windows considered continuation possible. The correct fix is to repair the data layout or pointer origin, not to disable alignment checking globally, which can reduce portability and conceal later corruption.
What to inspect
- Record both the exact NTSTATUS and processor architecture.
- Inspect the faulting operand size and address alignment.
- Compare structure packing and compiler ABI options across module boundaries.
- Correct the access rather than relying on architecture-specific unaligned behavior.
References
- Microsoft Open Specifications: NTSTATUS values
- Microsoft Windows SDK metadata: ntstatus.h
- Microsoft Learn: EXCEPTION_RECORD
- Microsoft Learn: Exception Dispatching
Looking for a different code? Search another status or error code.