Troubleshooting transient Windows I/O "The parameter is incorrect." errors

Posted by Kevin on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Kevin
Published on 2009-06-23T15:49:33Z Indexed on 2011/11/18 1:52 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 660

We have a set of .Net 2.0 applications running on Windows 2003 servers which have started experiencing transient "The parameter is incorrect." Windows I/O errors. These errors always happen accessing a file share on a SAN. The fact that this error has happened with multiple applications and multiple servers leads me to believe that this is an infrastructure issue of some sort.

The applications all run under the same domain account. When the errors occur they generally will resolve themselves within a few minutes. I can log in to the application server once the error starts occurring and access the file share myself with no problems.

I have looked at the Windows event logs and haven't found anything useful. Due to the generic nature of "The parameter is incorrect.", I am looking for additional troubleshooting suggestions for this error.

A sample stack trace is below. Note that while this example was during a directory creation operation, when the problem is occurring, this exception is thrown for any file system operations on the share.

Exception 1: System.IO.IOException

Message: The parameter is incorrect.

Method: Void WinIOError(Int32, System.String)
Source: mscorlib

Stack Trace:    at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
  at System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, DirectorySecurity dirSecurity)
  at System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(String path, DirectorySecurity directorySecurity)
  at System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(String path)

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about windows-server-2003

Related posts about filesystems