The following code: IDisposable d = ... new WeakReference<IDisposable>(d); Has started throwing the following exception on SOME machines. What could cause this? System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Unspecified error (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004005 (E_FAIL)) EDIT: the machines that experience the error are running Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Server 2012 and desktop machines running windows 7 work fine. (this is true, but I now think a different issue is the relevant difference... see below). EDIT: as an additional note, this occurred right after updating our codebase to Entity Framework 6.1.1.-beta1. In the above code, The IDisposable is a class which wraps an EF DbContext. EDIT: why the votes to close? EDIT: the stack trace of the failure ends at the WeakReference<T> constructor called in the above code: at System.WeakReference`1..ctor(T target, Boolean trackResurrection) // from here on down it's code we wrote/simple LINQ. None of this code has changed recently; // we just upgraded to EF6 and saw this failure start happening at Core.Data.EntityFrameworkDataContext.RegisterDependentDisposable(IDisposable child) at Core.Data.ServiceFactory.GetConstructorParameter[TService](Type parameterType) at System.Linq.Enumerable.WhereSelectListIterator`2.MoveNext() at System.Linq.Buffer`1..ctor(IEnumerable`1 source) at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToArray[TSource](IEnumerable`1 source) at Core.Data.ServiceFactory.CreateService[TService]() at MVC controller action method EDIT: it turns out that the machines having issues with this were running AppDynamics. Uninstalling that seems to have removed the issue.