0xc0000005 — Access violation while reading a file The reader touched memory it does not own while parsing the file.
What we do first
- Repair the header fields if they are out of range
- Update or remove the plugin
- Open the file with a different reader to confirm the header
If the same code appears after a Windows update, the driver and permission pages here are worth a read before you reinstall anything: drivers, error codes.
R. Okonkwo re-read this on 2026-10-05.
Before changing anything
The code above is what an application reports; it is not a diagnosis of what went wrong. Two checks are worth doing before permissions are touched: whether the file is on a volume the application can actually reach, and whether the file was moved or renamed since it was last opened. Both report as this code more often than a permission problem does.
Pages in this section describe the code as applications report it. Where a fix is listed here, it is one the library has seen work on a real file; where nothing has been confirmed, the page says so instead of guessing at a cause.