January 1st, 2025

How is it possible to get ERROR_KEY_DELETED when I’m creating a key?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some time ago, I explained that the ERROR_KEY_DELETED error code means that you tried to perform an operation on a deleted key. But what does it mean when you get the error when trying to create a key?

The key it’s complaining about is not the key you’re trying to create. The problem is with the key that you are trying to create the key beneath.

auto err = RegCreateKeyEx(parentKey, subkeyName,
    0, nullptr, REG_OPTION_NON_VOLATILE, KEY_WRITE, nullptr, &childKey);

If the parent key is deleted, then any future attempt to use that parent key (including creating child keys under it) will return ERROR_KEY_DELETED.

We’ll look into this some more next time.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Code

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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  • Adam Rosenfield 1 day ago

    The same thing can happen with creating files or directories: if any parent directory in the path being created doesn't exist, then the syscall will fail with ENOENT (POSIX) / ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND (Windows). Windows at least has the two separate error codes ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND and ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND, so users can distinguish between parent directory not found vs. the leaf file not being found (for non-creating open dispositions), whereas POSIX makes no such distinction.

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