| Previous | Next |
| STATUS_NO_KERB_KEY | STATUS_UNSUPPORTED_PREAUTH |
STATUS_HOST_DOWN
Separate a transport host-down classification from timeout and path-unreachable conditions
STATUS_HOST_DOWN is a transport result about a remote system. Windows Sockets documents the analogous WSAEHOSTDOWN condition as a socket operation encountering a dead destination host, while also noting that such conditions are more commonly reported as a timeout. That makes the exact transport and preceding network evidence important.
Do not equate the status with “remote computer is turned off.” ICMP Destination Unreachable messages can report host or network reachability problems, and RFC 1122 treats some ICMP errors as soft errors for TCP rather than immediate proof that the peer is permanently gone. Routing changes, failed gateways, filtering, and stale neighbor state can produce a host-down classification in a transport path.
Correlate the NTSTATUS with connection attempts, route selection, ICMP, ARP or Neighbor Discovery, and behavior from another source on the same network. If a later retry succeeds without a remote reboot, preserve the timing because it points toward transient path or neighbor-state failure rather than a durable peer outage.
What to inspect
- The transport/provider, destination address, route, and the exact operation that returned host-down.
- ICMP errors, retransmission and timeout history, and neighbor-resolution events preceding the final status.
- Comparison from another source host or path to determine whether the failure is peer-wide or specific to one route.
References
- Microsoft: Windows Sockets error codes
- RFC 1122: Requirements for Internet Hosts
- Microsoft Open Specifications: NTSTATUS values
Looking for a different code? Search another status or error code.