[BUG] Claude Desktop 1.3109.0.0 fails to launch on Windows 11 Pro 25H2 — root-cause candidate identified (HCS Invalid JSON document)
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?
Subject: Claude Desktop 1.3109.0.0 fails to launch on Windows 11 Pro 25H2 — root-cause candidate identified (HCS Invalid JSON document)
Hi Claude Support / Engineering Team,
I'm reporting a persistent failure of Claude Desktop to launch on Windows 11 Pro 25H2. I've already completed extensive troubleshooting and have isolated what looks like the root-cause error from cowork-service.log. I'd appreciate engineering's help resolving it.
Summary
Claude Desktop consistently fails to launch with the generic error: "Claude Desktop failed to launch. Please check for updates and try again." The error appears a few seconds after launch. No window ever renders. No crash dump is generated in %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps (the process dies too early).
System
- OS: Windows 11 Pro 25H2
- Claude Desktop: Claude_1.3109.0.0_x64__pzs8sxrjxfjjc (MSIX)
- App ID: Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc!Claude
- WebView2 Runtime: 147.0.3912.72 (healthy)
- sfc /verifyonly: no integrity violations
- Virtual Machine Platform: enabled
- No NTFS compression on C:
- No COR_PROFILER / CORECLR_* env vars set
- Desktop Known Folder registry is correct and folder exists
Root-cause candidate found in cowork-service.log
On the last successful VM session (before this issue began), the log shows the VM shutdown failed with an HCS error indicating a corrupted VM configuration:
2026/04/19 12:06:09.842331 [VM] Graceful shutdown failed, forcing termination:
HcsShutdownComputeSystem failed with HRESULT 0x0/0x8037010d:
{"Error":-1070137075,
"ErrorMessage":"The virtual machine or container JSON document is invalid.",
"ErrorEvents":[{"Message":"The specified property query is invalid:
The virtual machine or container JSON document is invalid.
(0xC037010D, 'Invalid JSON document \'$\'').",
"Provider":"17103e3f-3c6e-4677-bb17-3b267eb5be57",
"EventId":11001}]}Since then, every subsequent CoworkVMService start completes cleanly (Service ready. Listening on \\.\pipe\cowork-vm-service) but Claude Desktop still fails to launch. The service is healthy; the app-to-service handoff or the stored VM configuration is what's broken.
Also, every service startup logs:
Warning: failed to open service for recovery config: Access is denied.Secondary signal
Application Event Log shows a .NET Runtime error (ID 1022) around each launch attempt:
.NET Runtime version 4.0.30319.0 - There was a failure initializing profiling API attach infrastructure. This process will not allow a profiler to attach. HRESULT: 0x80004005.
Unclear if related to the VM service or independent.
Troubleshooting already performed
- Full MSIX uninstall + reinstall with manual deletion of %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc, %LOCALAPPDATA%\AnthropicClaude, %APPDATA%\Claude, and %ProgramData%\Claude. Reinstalled as administrator. Same failure.
- Full LocalCache wipe specifically to invalidate any cached VM JSON. Rebooted. Same failure.
- Cowork VM bundle reset (stopped CoworkVMService, restarted vmcompute, deleted vm_bundles, restarted service). Same failure.
- All MSIX services confirmed running (AppXSvc, StateRepository, InstallService).
- All Hyper-V / VM services confirmed running (CoworkVMService, vmcompute, hvhost, vmms).
- No orphan VMs registered in HCS.
- Direct launch via
Start-Process "shell:AppsFolder\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc!Claude"— same failure.
Background context
Claude Desktop worked correctly for an extended period (including Cowork) after an in-place Windows 11 repair from ISO. The launch failure appeared after I recreated the user's Desktop Known Folder via a PowerShell command (the folder wasn't being resolved by some apps) and rebooted. Windows Search also temporarily failed to resolve documents at that time but self-resolved after a later reboot. Claude Desktop has not recovered.
What I'd like help with
- Confirm whether the
Invalid JSON document '$'error from HCS is the root cause - Advise on how to fully purge the stored VM configuration (if LocalCache + ProgramData\Claude + vm_bundles deletion isn't sufficient)
- Provide a verbose logging flag or debug build for Claude Desktop's early startup path
- Confirm whether there are known issues with Claude Desktop 1.3109.0.0 on Windows 11 Pro 25H2 following Known Folder recreation
I have full PowerShell transcripts and cowork-service.log available on request. Happy to run any additional diagnostics.
Thank you for looking into this.
Best regards,
What Should Happen?
open
Error Messages/Logs
Claude Desktop Failed to LaunchSteps to Reproduce
Open de app
Claude Model
None
Is this a regression?
I don't know
Last Working Version
_No response_
Claude Code Version
1.
Platform
Anthropic API
Operating System
Windows
Terminal/Shell
Windows Terminal
Additional Information
_No response_
4 Comments
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Subject: Re: Claude Desktop 1.3109.0.0 on Windows 11 Pro 25H2 — additional findings
Quick follow-up to my previous report with two additional findings that narrow down the root cause significantly:
1.
main.logis 0 bytes.Location:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude\logs\main.logThe file exists and has a recent LastWriteTime, but its size is 0 KB. This means the Claude Desktop process is being terminated before it can write a single line to its own log — i.e., the crash happens before any Claude app code executes. No crash dump is generated in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumpseither, confirming the process dies extremely early in initialization.2. Disabling VirtualMachinePlatform does NOT resolve the issue.
I ran
Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatformand rebooted. Claude Desktop still fails to launch with the exact same error. This confirms the crash is pre-VM — the failure is not in the Cowork / HCS path, even though the HCSInvalid JSON document '$'signature appears in my logs.Hypothesis:
Given that (a) the process dies before writing to its own log and (b) no crash dump is produced, something external to Claude Desktop is likely terminating the MSIX-packaged process immediately at startup. Possible suspects: Windows Defender, Smart App Control, Attack Surface Reduction rules, or a code-integrity policy. I don't have a way to confirm this from my side.
Could engineering advise on:
Happy to run any additional diagnostics.
Thanks,
[Tu nombre]
Solved it.
The culprit: when I uninstalled OneDrive without first undoing the redirects it had set up, Windows was left with a bunch of system folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc.) still pointing to C:\Users\matis\OneDrive\... paths that no longer existed. Claude Desktop, at startup, queries these paths as part of its initialization — finds them pointing to nothing — and the process dies before it can even write its own log file.
The fix: we redirected all those paths back to the native folders under C:\Users\matis\ (Documents, Pictures, Music), deleted the OneDrive and OneDriveConsumer environment variables that were still pointing to the ghost folder, and cleaned up leftover OneDrive keys in the registry.
Why we didn't see it sooner: every symptom initially pointed to Cowork and the VM (the cowork-service log showed an Invalid JSON document error, and there were public Anthropic bugs with that exact signature), but the key breakthrough was realizing that Claude Desktop's main.log was 0 bytes — meaning the app was dying before it ever touched its own code. That told us the cause was external to Claude (something in the Windows environment), and when we retraced the history, the OneDrive uninstall detail surfaced.
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