**[BUG] Cowork locks up after ~5 min — EventEmitter memory leak (MaxListenersExceededWarning) accumulates per session, Electron renderer freezes**

[BUG] Cowork locks up after ~5 min — EventEmitter memory leak (MaxListenersExceededWarning) accumulates per session, Electron renderer freezes

Labels: bug, platform:windows, area:cowork

Environment

• Claude Desktop: 1.12603.1.0 (MSIX, Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc)
• OS: Windows 11 Pro x64
• CoworkVMService: present, StartType=Automatic (race condition — stops before Claude launches)
• VM bundle: 6d1538ba6fecc4e5c5583993c4b30bb1875f0f5a
• SDK version: 2.1.170

What happens

Claude Desktop locks up ("Not Responding") after approximately 5 minutes of Cowork use. The CoworkVMService starts successfully and the VM boots cleanly, but the Electron renderer process freezes due to an accumulating EventEmitter memory leak. Restarting Claude Desktop restores function temporarily before the cycle repeats.

Root cause evidence — claude.ai-web.log

MaxListenersExceededWarning: Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected.
11 $eipc_message$...$_AutoUpdater_$_updaterState_$store$_update listeners added.
Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit

(repeats every ~5–7 minutes across multiple session restarts)

Secondary issue — CoworkVMService race condition

CoworkVMService is set to StartType=Automatic but consistently stops before Claude Desktop launches. Claude Desktop attempts to connect to \\.\pipe\cowork-vm-service before the service is ready, resulting in repeated ENOENT errors and eventual startup failure. Manual Start-Service CoworkVMService resolves it. sc.exe config CoworkVMService start= delayed-auto returns Access Denied even as local admin — the MSIX service descriptor locks out configuration changes.

cowork_vm_node.log — service not running (pre-fix)

2026-06-11 20:43:45 [info] [VM:start] Configuring Windows VM service...
2026-06-11 20:43:45 [warn] [vm-client] Event resubscribe failed: Error: connect ENOENT \\.\pipe\cowork-vm-service
(repeats 1x/sec for 5 seconds)
2026-06-11 20:43:50 [error] [VM:start] Startup failed: Error: VM service not running. The service failed to start.
2026-06-11 20:43:50 [info] [VM:start] Skipping auto-reinstall (already attempted once)

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Claude Desktop on Windows 11 Pro (MSIX install)
2. Open a Cowork session
3. Use Cowork normally for ~5 minutes
4. Observe claude.exe renderer process CPU climbing (PIDs with 30–45 CPU units)
5. Claude Desktop becomes unresponsive ("Not Responding")
6. Check claude.ai-web.log — MaxListenersExceededWarning present and repeating

Expected vs actual

• Expected: EventEmitter listeners cleaned up when a Cowork session ends
• Actual: Listeners accumulate indefinitely — 11+ per session restart. Renderer freezes once listener count saturates the event loop.

Workarounds (both required)

1. Start-Service CoworkVMService — run before launching Claude Desktop
2. Restart Claude Desktop every few sessions to flush leaked listeners