Fix STATUS_REDIRECTOR_STARTED 0xC00000FC

Quick answer: Restart the Workstation service (net stop lanmanworkstation && net start lanmanworkstation). That's it.

What's going on here?

The error 0xC00000FC — STATUS_REDIRECTOR_STARTED — shows up when you try to manually start the Workstation service (or something that depends on it) and Windows tells you it's already running. The redirector is the part of Windows that handles network file sharing (SMB). It starts when the Workstation service starts. So if you're seeing this, it means you double-tapped the start button, or a dependent service tried to start it after it was already up.

I've seen this mostly in two real-world scenarios:

You're troubleshooting a network drive that won't map and you run net start lanmanworkstation manually — and it's already running.
A script or batch file tries to start the Workstation service but it's already started from boot.

Either way, the redirector itself is fine. The fix is straightforward.

Step-by-step fix

Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
Click Start, type cmd, right-click Command Prompt, and choose Run as administrator. You'll see a User Account Control prompt — click Yes.
Check the state of the Workstation service.
At the prompt, type:
```
sc query lanmanworkstation
```
Look for the line that says STATE. If it reads 4 RUNNING, the redirector is already started. If it reads 1 STOPPED or 3 STOP_PENDING, you might be dealing with a different problem (like a hung service). This guide assumes you see RUNNING.
Restart the Workstation service.
Type the following two commands one after the other, pressing Enter after each:
```
net stop lanmanworkstation
net start lanmanworkstation
```
After the first command, you should see: The Workstation service was stopped successfully.
After the second: The Workstation service was started successfully.
Try your original operation again.
Whatever you were doing that triggered the error — mapping a network drive, running a script, or starting a dependent service — try it now. The error should be gone.

What if restarting the service doesn't work?

Sometimes the service is stuck or a dependent service is holding things up. Try these in order.

Reboot the machine

This clears any orphaned service states. Reboot from Start > Power > Restart. After the reboot, check if the error still happens.

Check the Server service

The redirector is also tied to the Server service (lanmanserver). If both are running, they can conflict if one is misconfigured. Open an admin Command Prompt and run:

sc query lanmanserver

If it's RUNNING, stop and restart it too:

net stop lanmanserver && net start lanmanserver

Look for duplicate network redirectors

On rare occasions, a third-party VPN client or network filter driver (like from Cisco AnyConnect or a firewall) installs its own redirector and clashes with Windows'. Open Device Manager (right-click Start > Device Manager), go to View > Show hidden devices. Expand Network adapters. Look for anything with "redirector" in its name. If you see two, disable one (right-click > Disable device). Reboot.

How to prevent this from happening

Most of the time, you don't need to manually start the Workstation service — it auto-starts on boot. If you wrote a script that tries to start it, check its running state before starting it. Here's a simple batch check:

sc query lanmanworkstation | find "RUNNING"
if errorlevel 1 net start lanmanworkstation

That script only starts the service if it's not already running. That'll stop this error from ever popping up again.

And if you're mapping network drives in a login script, don't try to restart the Workstation service as part of that process. Just map the drive directly with net use and let the service do its job.