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ERROR_NO_ACE_CONDITION
the specified access-control entry does not contain a condition.
ERROR_NO_ACE_CONDITION means that this condition Conditional ACE APIs expect a callback or resource-attribute expression embedded in the access-control entry. This result means the caller asked to read, evaluate, or modify a condition on an ACE type that has none.
Where the result appears
- GetAce or security-descriptor tooling inspecting conditional ACEs.
- central access policy and dynamic access control utilities.
- administrative code converting SDDL to structured ACL data.
- authorization diagnostics that assume every callback ACE contains a condition.
What the result tells you
The value identifies a specific Windows state, but it does not by itself identify the component that introduced that state. Preserve the original this result value, the API or subsystem that produced it, and the object being operated on. A wrapper that replaces it with a generic exception or Boolean failure removes the distinction needed to choose the correct recovery path.
Diagnostic evidence to collect
- the ACE type, flags, size, SID, and raw bytes.
- the source SDDL and the parsed security descriptor.
- which API expected a condition and why.
- whether the ACL was canonicalized or transformed before inspection.
Correlate the result evidence on one timeline. The first event that changes the state associated with this result is usually more valuable than later retries returning the same code. Record process and thread identity, session, timestamp, API parameters, and the immediately preceding successful operation.
Handling and recovery
Check the ACE type before requesting its condition. Treat absence as a valid structural case when the contract allows ordinary, unconditional ACEs; only report corruption when the surrounding descriptor violates its documented format.
Retry after it only when the evidence shows that an external condition can change. When it is caused by malformed input, revoked authority, unsupported state, hardware damage, or an offline maintenance requirement, an unchanged retry adds noise and can overwrite the earliest useful diagnostics.
Common misinterpretation
An ACE without a condition is not automatically invalid. Many common allow and deny ACEs are intentionally unconditional.
Guidance for developers
Keep it in its Win32/LRESULT domain in structured telemetry. When converting it to an HRESULT, exception, RPC response, or JSON field, retain the source domain and numeric value alongside the human-readable text. Do not branch on the localized message string for this Win32 error.
A test should construct the specific state, assert the exact result, and verify that partial resources are released. The recovery test for this Win32 error should prove that the operation is either deferred until a measurable state change or fails without an uncontrolled retry loop.
References
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