Microsoft provides very useful command-line tool called err.exe that can help you to understand the meaning of the error codes. When you run err.exe and specify an error code, the program searches all the error-code definitions from the various header files that Windows uses to generate a list of possible error meanings. You can download err.exe at Microsoft Web site.

Running the command with no parameters returns a list of all the header files the command checks. You can provide error code in hexadecimal or decimal format.