[BUG]: AzureCLI Task Failing with Exit Code -1073740791

[JoshHariz]

New issue checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I read pipeline troubleshooting guide
• I checked how to collect logs

Task name

AzureCLI@2

Task version

2.274.1

Issue Description

AzureCLI tasks are intermittently failing on startup. Seems to have started occurring around May 15th. Users have reported similar issues in #22195

Issue has been occurring more and more recently this week. As of writing, our deployment pipeline has failed three times in a row due to this issue- all on different steps which are all AzureCLI tasks

Environment type (Please select at least one enviroment where you face this issue)

• Self-Hosted
• Microsoft Hosted
• VMSS Pool
• Container

Azure DevOps Server type

dev.azure.com (formerly visualstudio.com)

Azure DevOps Server Version (if applicable)

No response

Operation system

Windows 10 Server

Relevant log output

2026-05-25T01:30:46.1185641Z ##[section]Starting: Check if table exists - ErrorSetting
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1195350Z ==============================================================================
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1195521Z Task         : Azure CLI
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1195630Z Description  : Run Azure CLI commands against an Azure subscription in a PowerShell Core/Shell script when running on Linux agent or PowerShell/PowerShell Core/Batch script when running on Windows agent.
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1195876Z Version      : 2.274.1
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1195982Z Author       : Microsoft Corporation
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1196086Z Help         : https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/deploy/azure-cli
2026-05-25T01:30:46.1196239Z ==============================================================================
2026-05-25T01:30:46.5085269Z [command]C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /D /S /C ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\CLI2\wbin\az.cmd" version"
2026-05-25T01:30:46.9892860Z {
2026-05-25T01:30:46.9915081Z   "azure-cli": "2.84.0",
2026-05-25T01:30:47.0068997Z   "azure-cli-core": "2.84.0",
2026-05-25T01:30:47.0252057Z   "azure-cli-telemetry": "1.1.0",
2026-05-25T01:30:47.1144899Z   "extensions": {}
2026-05-25T01:30:47.1272460Z }
2026-05-25T01:30:47.1288015Z Setting AZURE_CONFIG_DIR env variable to: C:\a\_temp\.azclitask
2026-05-25T01:30:47.1288470Z Setting active cloud to: AzureCloud
2026-05-25T01:30:47.1616530Z [command]C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /D /S /C ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\CLI2\wbin\az.cmd" cloud set -n AzureCloud"
2026-05-25T01:30:47.7846122Z ##[error]Exit code -1073740791 returned from process: file name 'C:\agent\externals\node24\bin\node.exe', arguments '"C:\a\_tasks\AzureCLI_46e4be58-730b-4389-8a2f-ea10b3e5e815\2.274.1\azureclitask.js"'.
2026-05-25T01:30:47.7857693Z ##[section]Finishing: Check if table exists - ErrorSetting

Full task logs with system.debug enabled

Issue occurs intermittently- unable to gather logs

Repro steps

Issue occurs intermittently- unable to gather logs.

[v-dko]

@JoshHariz can you let us know which node version you are using?

[JoshHariz]

@v-dko Node v25.8.0

[v-schhabra]

@JoshHariz Please share the debug logs as well by adding the variable "system.debug" to true?

[JoshHariz]

I've received this response from Microsoft support:

---

The team has confirmed that this is a known issue related to Node.js v24 on Windows, and they are working on a long-term fix.

The root cause is tracked under this Node.js GitHub issue: Node.js v24.15.0: native crash (exit code 57005/0xDEAD) during npm ci on Windows · Issue #62991 · nodejs/node

As a workaround, you can set the following pipeline variable to instruct the agent to use Node 20 instead of Node 24:

Variable name: AGENT_USE_NODE20_1
Value: true

This can be added in your YAML pipeline definition:

variables:
  AGENT_USE_NODE20_1: "true"

---

After adding the variable, we have not seen the issue re-occur.

It seems like the issue is related to which node version the AzureCLI tasks run on, as opposed to the agents themselves. This Node issue is the same root cause referenced in #22195.

[JoshHariz]

@v-schhabra These are the logs of the failed task. This is the first step in the job after the checkout step. 3_Get Service Bus primary connection string - serviceBus.txt