What does Windows error code 8591 (ERROR_DS_NTDSCRIPT_SYNTAX_ERROR) mean?

ERROR_DS_NTDSCRIPT_SYNTAX_ERROR

The Directory Service cannot parse the script because of a syntax error.

ERROR_DS_NTDSCRIPT_SYNTAX_ERROR is Win32 error 8591 (0x0000218F).

Likely impact: No intended directory change should be assumed to have run past the parser failure unless the tool explicitly supports partial execution.

Typical causes

• a token, quote, delimiter, or section is malformed.
• the file uses an unsupported command form.
• encoding changes alter punctuation.
• template substitution produced invalid syntax.

Troubleshooting steps

1. Verify that the script conforms to the grammar expected by the NTDS scripting processor.
2. Collect script file hash and encoding and line and column diagnostic.

Useful evidence

• Collect tool and OS build.
• Collect a minimal parser reproduction.

Recovery and retry

Correct the syntax at the reported location, regenerate from a validated template, and parse the script before running it against a directory.

Related errors

ERROR_DS_INVALID_SCRIPT can reject a syntactically readable but semantically invalid script; this code is a grammar failure

Example

A generated script omits a closing quote after variable expansion. Validating the expanded file before execution identifies the exact malformed line.

References

• Microsoft: exact Win32 system error range
• Microsoft: AD DS troubleshooting
• Microsoft: dcdiag
• Microsoft: repadmin