I don't think we ever found out where 42 came from. I think we resolved it in Chef in [CHEF-2528](https://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-2528), maybe this is a holdover from that as a workaround. Windows support in shell out was pretty infantile in 2011 when the windows package LWRP was first written. August 2011 is when CHEF-2528 was opened, so I bet this archaeological hunt is correct and we can drop 42 how. bet. hope.

The only history I can find on 127 is from the windows cookbook git log:
```
commit 37524a3997edde183c75621a59e9d3f8040ccf9e
Author: Seth Chisamore <schisamo@opscode.com>
Date:   Fri Oct 28 18:41:53 2011 -0400

    windows v1.2.8

    * FIX: Older Windows (Windows Server 2003) sometimes return 127 on successful forked commands
    * FIX: windows_package, ensure we pass the WOW* registry redirection flags into reg.open

commit 026d754a007dee6ecf8bf6b95d4606c0fb7ccbd8
Author: Seth Chisamore <schisamo@opscode.com>
Date:   Fri Oct 28 12:16:28 2011 -0400

    older versions of windows sometimes return 127 on successful commands
```

I can't find any corroborating evidence on the googles. MSDN reports 127 as:

```
ERROR_PROC_NOT_FOUND
127 (0x7F)
The specified procedure could not be found.
```