Error codes lookups in windows

In day-to-day windows administration we generally come across many error codes in eventlogs and application specific logs. The error codes generally will be in hex form. We have to search in internet to find the meaning of that error and to troubleshoot further.

Microsoft has provided a good error code look-up tool(err.exe) which simplifies the life of windows administrator. It's a command line tool and we need to pass the error message as command line argument to err.exe and it displays the text explaining the meaning of error message. I found it as very helpful for me to troubleshoot the things and I hope it helps you too :-)

Syntax:

C:\>err [value] [value]…

where must be of one of the following forms:

• Decorated hex (0x54f)
• Implicit hex (54f)
• Ambiguous (1359)
• Exact string (=ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR)
• Substring (:INTERNAL_ERROR)

Download it from Microsoft site. Though it says for exchange, it will work for most of the Win32 error codes.

Happy learning...
Sitaram Pamarthi