ERROR_RANGE_LIST_CONFLICT 0x273: Real Fixes That Work

What 0X00000273 Really Means

ERROR_RANGE_LIST_CONFLICT (0X00000273) isn't something you'll find in Microsoft's official Win32 error list. Search the docs and you'll come up empty. That's because it's an NTSTATUS value that leaks out of kernel-level range allocators — the internal bookkeeping Windows uses to hand out chunks of memory, disk sectors, or I/O ranges. When two callers ask for overlapping ranges, the allocator refuses and returns 0x273.

You'll see it most often in these places:

Hyper-V — when a virtual machine tries to claim a memory-mapped I/O range already assigned to another VM or to the host.
Storage Spaces and ReFS — when a slab allocator gets a conflicting allocation request, usually after a bad disk drop.
Windows Media / DVR — yes, really. The DVR range list in mfreadwrite.dll throws 0x273 when a recording session and a live buffer collide.
Custom drivers — anyone calling RtlAddRange or RtlInsertEntry with overlapping bounds.

So before you start googling "how to fix 0x273," understand this: the code isn't the bug. It's the messenger. Some piece of software asked for a range that was already taken. Your job is to find the conflict.

Fix #1: The 30-Second Reset

Start here. Skipping this step is the single biggest waste of time I see on my help desk.

Save anything open. Seriously — close Chrome, Word, whatever.
Press Win + R, type shutdown /r /t 0, and hit Enter.
The machine reboots immediately. Don't do a "Restart" from the start menu — that's a hybrid shutdown on Windows 10 and 11 and won't clear kernel range tables.

After the reboot, retry whatever triggered the error. You should see it either gone entirely or reproducible in the exact same spot. If it's gone, you had a stale range entry from a crashed process. Done. If it's back, the conflict is deterministic and you need Fix #2.

Real-world example: A customer running Hyper-V on a Ryzen 9 5950X hit 0x273 every time she started her Ubuntu VM after a Windows Update. A cold reboot cleared it for two days, then it came back. That's a hardware-reservation conflict, not a memory leak.

Fix #2: Find and Free the Conflicting Range (5 Minutes)

If the error returns, something is holding a range your app needs. Here's how to find it.

For Hyper-V users

Nested virtualization and PCI passthrough are the usual suspects. Run this in an elevated PowerShell:

Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.State -eq 'Running'} | Get-VMHostAssignableDevice
Get-VM | Get-VMAssignableDevice

You should see a list of devices currently assigned to VMs. If two VMs claim the same GPU or NIC, that's your conflict. Remove the assignment from one:

Remove-VMAssignableDevice -VM "VMName" -LocationPath "<path>"

Then start the VM again. If it launches cleanly, you had a duplicate device assignment. Don't reassign the same device to both VMs — Hyper-V won't share it, and 0x273 is how it tells you.

For Storage Spaces users

Open an admin PowerShell and check pool health:

Get-StoragePool | Get-PhysicalDisk | Format-Table FriendlyName, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus
Get-VirtualDisk | Format-Table FriendlyName, HealthStatus, OperationalStatus

You're looking for a disk showing Warning or a virtual disk stuck in Detached. A failed slab can leave orphaned range reservations that block new writes. If a disk is flagged, retire it:

Set-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName "DiskName" -Usage Retired

Then run Repair-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName "YourVDisk". Expect this to take 10–60 minutes depending on pool size. You'll see a progress bar in the console. When it completes, retry the operation that threw 0x273.

Fix #3: Driver-Level Range Conflicts (15+ Minutes)

If Fixes 1 and 2 didn't touch it, you're dealing with a driver that's registering overlapping memory ranges. This is rare but happens with older capture cards, virtual audio drivers, and some VPN adapters.

Step 1: Rule out the easy wins

Boot into Safe Mode with networking (msconfig → Boot tab → Safe boot → Network). Try to reproduce the error. If it's gone in Safe Mode, a third-party driver is at fault. Boot back to normal mode and disable adapters one at a time in Device Manager.

Step 2: Check for Range conflicts directly

Open Device Manager (devmgmt.msc), go to View → Resources by type, and expand Memory. You should see a list of every physical address range Windows has handed out. Look for two entries claiming the same start address. If you find one, note the device names.

The usual culprits:

Old Hauppauge or AverMedia capture cards running 2014-era drivers
Virtual audio cables (VB-Audio, VoiceMeeter) that haven't been updated since Windows 10 1809
Some older Intel PROSet adapters when teamed with a Hyper-V virtual switch

Step 3: Remove and reinstall the offending driver

Don't just uninstall from Device Manager — that leaves the INF registered. Do this instead:

pnputil /enum-drivers

Find the oemXX.inf line for the driver in question. Then:

pnputil /delete-driver oemXX.inf /uninstall /force

You should see "Driver package deleted successfully." Reboot. Reinstall the latest driver from the vendor — not from Windows Update, which loves to hand out the same stale package you just removed.

What Not to Do

Skip these — they're a waste of time for 0x273:

DISM and SFC. Running sfc /scannow is reflex for a lot of people. It won't help here. 0x273 isn't a corrupted system file, it's a runtime allocation refusal.
Registry cleaners. No.
Increasing page file size. Range conflicts are about address space, not disk-backed memory. You'll just be slower and still broken.
Reinstalling Windows. This is the nuclear option and I've seen it fail to fix 0x273 because the user reinstalled the same bad driver within an hour.

If You're a Developer and You Hit 0x273

The bug is in your code, not Windows. Check every call to RtlAddRange (or your allocator of choice) for bounds that overlap an existing entry. The RTL_RANGE structure has fields for Start, End, and flags — a missing RTL_RANGE_SHARED flag on an intentionally shared range will trigger this every time. Also check that you're not passing End < Start, which some wrappers silently accept and pass through.

Log the failing ranges before you call the allocator. Nine times out of ten, you'll find two entries that clearly overlap and one line of logging tells you exactly which caller is the offender.

When to Call It In

If you've done all three fixes and 0x273 still fires, you're dealing with a firmware or kernel-level issue that isn't going to be cracked from the desktop. Open a ticket with the vendor whose software throws the error — they'll want an ETW trace. For Hyper-V cases, Microsoft support is genuinely useful here, but bring the Get-VMHostAssignableDevice output or you'll be stuck in triage.

One last thing: write down what you changed between the last working state and the first 0x273. That timeline solves more cases than any tool I own.