Where can i find CreateProcess error codes' details?

Question

I'm running in php the following:

$res = proc_open($cmd, $descriptorspec, $pipes, "C:\\xampp\htdocs\\",null,array('bypass_shell'=>true));

Problem is that it gives the following error:

Warning: proc_open(): CreateProcess failed, error code - 3

Where can I find out what the error means?

PS: it's on a Windows Server 2007. SP2. User is admin, full acess. PHP is version 5.3.1

Answer 1

In Windows, CreateProcess doesn't actually return an error code. Instead you use GetLastError to find more details if CreateProcess fails, then use FormatMessage to turn the error code from GetLastError into a proper description. (The error codes from GetLastError can also be decoded using this list)

Looking at the source for proc_open(), PHP is actually doing the GetLastError() for you in the event of a failure, and the error code it's logging is the return from GetLastError() rather than from CreateProcess (which returns a BOOL, unlikely to be 3 :) )

Note that proc_open uses this to dump the message:

php_error_docref(NULL TSRMLS_CC, E_WARNING, "CreateProcess failed, error code - %u", dw);

...so that "-" you've got before the 3 is just a hyphen, not a minus sign. You're therefore getting error code 3, which, according to that list means "The system cannot find the path specified.".