Problem Statement:
Sometimes, the error messages generated are not friendly to understand the underlined issues. This is going to be an extra effort to google out for most of us with the error code (mostly a hexa value) and identify the corresponding windows error message.
Solution:
A simple solution would be to use NET HELPMSG with the errocode. But if the error code is a hexa value, then we need to identify the corresponding Decimal value to use as a parameter to NET HELPMSG.
Here is a script to identify actual error message from hex error code. This is important to be aware that this approach will only work for Win32 error codes from Microsoft Windows. If the net helpmsg command does not return a result, the cause is likely the error has not originated from Windows, or no longer a valid Win32 process.
DECLARE @hex VARCHAR(64) = '0x80070643'
Set @hex = Right(@hex,4)
DECLARE @rez BIGINT;
SELECT @rez = ISNULL(@rez,0) * 16 +
CHARINDEX(substring(@hex,n.number+1,1),'0123456789ABCDEF') - 1
FROM MASTER..spt_values n WHERE n.TYPE='P' AND n.number<len(@hex)
/*
--To use NET HELPMSG, need to enable xp_cmdshell as below:
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options',1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell',1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options',0
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
*/
Declare @Table Table(WindowsErrorMessage nVarchar(MAX))
Declare @s nvarchar(500) = 'NET HELPMSG ' + Cast(@rez as varchar(MAX))
Insert into @Table
exec xp_cmdshell @s
Select @hex HexaVal,@rez DecimalVal,* From @Table
where WindowsErrorMessage is not null