[BUG] Cowork VM timeout on Windows 11 Home Build 26200 — all prerequisites met

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

System Info:

• Windows 11 Home, Build 26200.8037
• Claude Desktop: latest version
• Active subscription (paying customer)

Error received:
"Failed to start Claude's workspace — VM connection timeout after 60 seconds"

Also occasionally seeing:
"VM is already running"

What I have already tried:

• Clean uninstall and reinstall of Claude
• Cleared all app data (%APPDATA%\Claude and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc)
• Manually stopping and restarting CoworkVMService via PowerShell
• Running Claude as Administrator
• WSL2 confirmed installed and up to date (version 2.6.3.0)
• All Windows features enabled: Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Platform,

Windows Hypervisor Platform, Windows Subsystem for Linux

• All storage locations set to C: drive
• Attempted to enable Windows Containers feature — not available on Home edition

System checks:

• HypervisorPlatform: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-All: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-Tools-All: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-PowerShell: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-Hypervisor: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-Services: Enabled
• Microsoft-Hyper-V-Management-Clients: Enabled

Cowork has never worked on this machine since purchase.
I purchased Claude specifically for the Cowork feature.

Related issues: #25136, #27652, #31516, #38112

What Should Happen?

Co Work Should be working properly

Error Messages/Logs

"Failed to start Claude's workspace
VM is already running
Restarting Claude or your computer sometimes resolves this. If it persists, you can reinstall the workspace."

"Failed to start Claude's workspace — VM connection timeout after 60 seconds"

Steps to Reproduce

1. You are on Windows 11 Home Build 26200
2. You go to CoWork with any request
3. Did all the prerequisites above in what's wrong section and its still happening

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

claude-sonnet-4-6

Claude Code Version

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

PowerShell

Additional Information

<img width="1223" height="561" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/bc5540c2-9b15-4d7a-911c-2a1669e37a54" />