Win10 DCOM 10016 Errors Are Mostly Benign
I’m active at TenForums.com. I spend at least 90 minutes a day there, reading user posts and responding when I can. There’s a class of errors that show up in the Windows Event Viewer for all Windows 10 machines. The event source is “Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM” aka DCOM, and the event ID is 10016. Some borderline OCD Windows users obsess about the presence of any and all errors in the Event Viewer, and attack these DCOM errors with a vengeance. There are various fixes possible that involve hacking the registry or using the Component Services admin tool. These either grant users the missing permissions that provoke the errors, or turn DCOM error logging off completely. But now we know that Win10 DCOM 10016 errors are mostly benign. This revelation comes thanks to f14tomcat, who turned up a Microsoft Support note that explains things nicely.
Header of the support note that confirms these errors occur by deliberate design and may be safely ignored.
[Click on image for full-sized view.]
How Do We Know That Win10 DCOM 10016 Errors Are Mostly Benign?
It’s all laid out in the Microsoft Support note “DCOM event ID 10016 is logged in Windows.” These errors are explained there as follows (verbatim quote):
These 10016 events are recorded when Microsoft components tries to access DCOM components without the required permissions. In this case, this is expected and by design.
A coding pattern has been implemented where the code first tries to access the DCOM components with one set of parameters. If the first attempt is unsuccessful, it tries again with another set of parameters. The reason why it does not skip the first attempt is because there are scenarios where it can succeed. In those scenarios, that is preferable.
Furthermore, the same note asserts that “These events can be safely ignored because they do not adversely affect functionality and are by design.” I’d long suspected this was the case myself. Why? Because even after making the various possible repairs, it never made any difference in system stability or behavior. Also, the errors blithely returned with each feature upgrade. That told me that MS didn’t think they mattered. And now, of course, this is explicitly confirmed in the afore-linked Support note.
You wouldn’t believe how often this comes up at TenForums and elswhere. A quick search there shows 174 hits on “Error 10016.” I’ve sent an email to the main forum moderator asking for a pinned post on this topic. I’ve even volunteered to write it up, to let everybody know what’s up. Yes, it’s an error. But it occurs by design on ALL Win10 systems, and can be ignored. End of story, so fuggedaboutit!