What does Windows error code 575 (ERROR_APP_INIT_FAILURE) mean?

ERROR_APP_INIT_FAILURE

What this result means

ERROR_APP_INIT_FAILURE is a Windows system result. The application failed before completing initialization. This is usually a summary emitted after an earlier loader, dependency, runtime, configuration, security, or resource failure.

Why it can appear

• a required DLL, runtime, configuration file, or service is unavailable
• module initialization returned failure
• code-integrity, mitigation, or application-control policy blocked startup
• startup exhausted memory, handles, desktop resources, or another prerequisite

Troubleshooting steps

1. Collect the earliest loader, application, side-by-side, code-integrity, and runtime event
2. Capture process-monitor or loader diagnostics for file and registry access
3. Compare environment, architecture, working directory, and dependencies with a working host
4. Avoid focusing only on the final summary code

Correct recovery and handling

Repair the first failed prerequisite and restart the application. Roll back the recent deployment when startup broke immediately after an update. Do not add broad retries around deterministic initialization failure.

Related and easily confused conditions

This differs from a later runtime crash: the process may exist briefly but never reaches its ready state, so health checks and service managers should not mark it healthy.

References

• Microsoft: System error codes
• Microsoft: System error codes 500–999