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ERROR_INVALID_PASSWORDNAME
The specified password value is invalid for this operation.
ERROR_INVALID_PASSWORDNAME is Win32 error 1216 (0x4C0). Despite the unusual symbolic name, the system text refers to the format of a specified password. The value is most useful when retained with the exact network provider or legacy management API that returned it.
Do not expose the password while diagnosing
Never write the clear-text value to logs, crash reports, command histories, or telemetry. Capture only whether the field was null, empty, unexpectedly long, contained embedded NUL characters, or was supplied in an unsupported encoding. A one-way diagnostic hash is usually unnecessary and can still create security risk for low-entropy passwords.
Likely input problems
- a password pointer references a truncated or nonterminated buffer
- ANSI and Unicode variants are mixed across a wrapper boundary
- a credential blob is passed where the API expects plain text
- the caller includes a user name, domain prefix, or quoting characters in the password field
- an API-specific maximum length is exceeded before normal policy evaluation
- an empty value is sent where omission or
NULLhas a different meaning
Diagnostic sequence
Confirm the function signature and character width, then inspect how the secret is obtained and marshaled. Compare the failing provider with a known supported provider and test with a newly entered credential through a secure input path. If a credential manager returns a structured blob, use the documented conversion instead of treating arbitrary bytes as a string.
Difference from security-policy failures
ERROR_PASSWORD_RESTRICTION means a new password conflicts with account policy such as length or history. ERROR_LOGON_FAILURE means credentials were not accepted for authentication. Error 1216 is a format-level rejection by the current interface and may occur before the password is checked against an account.
Application guidance
- keep secrets in bounded, zeroed memory where practical
- avoid command-line password parameters
- use wide-character APIs consistently
- do not automatically modify or trim user-entered passwords
- return a neutral user message while retaining the numeric code for support
Retry policy
A retry with the identical marshaled value is unlikely to help. Reacquire the credential through the correct secure channel or fix the provider adapter first. Rate limits and lockout protections still apply when testing authentication after the format problem has been resolved.
Example
A legacy network connector reads a UTF-16 password but calls an ANSI provider function with the same pointer. The provider sees embedded zero bytes and returns 1216. Converting through the documented encoding path and using the wide-character API eliminates the format error without logging the secret.
References
- Microsoft: System Error Codes (1000–1299)
- Microsoft: Credentials Management
- Microsoft: CredReadW function
- Microsoft: Authentication portal
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