[FEATURE] Make the "Virtualization is not available" banner in Cowork dismissible / add an opt-out for users who intentionally run without the sandbox VM

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When hardware virtualization is unavailable or intentionally disabled, Cowork shows a large "Virtualization is not available" banner in every session. The banner:

• occupies roughly 20% of the chat window (see screenshot);
• has no close/dismiss button — only "Copy details";
• reappears in every new session and after every message exchange that touches the workspace;
• cannot be disabled via any setting or config file (checked %APPDATA%\Claude\config.json, claude_desktop_config.json, cowork_settings.json).

Why this matters

Not everyone can or wants to enable virtualization:

• On older CPUs (pre-MBEC, ~2017 and earlier), enabling virtualization historically triggers Windows VBS/Memory Integrity, which causes a significant system-wide slowdown.
• The Cowork utility VM consumes ~1.8 GB RAM (see #29045, #57247), which is a lot on 8–16 GB machines.
• Cowork remains genuinely useful without the sandbox: Read/Write/Edit file tools, MCP connectors, web search and the "Claude writes a script → user runs it → Claude reads the report" workflow all work fine.

This is a deliberate, informed choice — but the UI treats it as a permanent error state and penalizes the user with a persistent banner.

Proposed Solution

Proposed solution

Any of the following would solve it:

1. A close (×) button on the banner with a "Don't show again" option, persisted per device.
2. A setting like coworkSandboxDisabled: true in claude_desktop_config.json that stops the app from attempting to boot the VM (and therefore from showing the banner).
3. Collapse the banner to a small one-line indicator/icon in the status area after the first display.

Environment

• Claude Desktop 1.11847.5 (Cowork), Windows 10/11 x64
• Hardware virtualization intentionally disabled (older laptop, performance reasons)

Related

• #29045 (VM spawns even for chat-only use)
• #57247 (feature request: configurable VM memory cap)
• Numerous false-positive reports of the same banner: #45446, #42227, #36230 — a dismiss option would also reduce pain for users hit by those bugs while they wait for fixes.

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example

_No response_

Additional Context

_No response_