[BUG] Cowork toggle does not persist — reverts to disabled after every reboot/relaunch, despite all underlying services confirmed healthy

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?

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 Pro (build confirmed via Settings > System > About)
• Claude Desktop: Latest version (confirmed up to date via in-app check)
• Hardware: Lenovo laptop

Summary

Enabling Cowork in Claude Desktop triggers the expected "requires a restart" prompt. After rebooting, Cowork shows as disabled again and prompts to be enabled once more — creating a closed loop. This persists even after:

• A full system reboot
• Fully quitting and relaunching Claude Desktop (verified no orphaned processes in Task Manager)
• Confirming the app is on the latest version

Diagnostics already performed (all passed)

Ran the following in an elevated PowerShell session to rule out the usual underlying causes:

Get-Service vmms
# Status: Running, DisplayName: Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All
# State: Enabled

Get-Service CoworkVMService
# Status: Running, DisplayName: Claude

All three core dependencies — Hyper-V feature, vmms, and the dedicated CoworkVMService — report healthy/running. Despite this, the Cowork toggle in the app still does not persist across reboot.

What Should Happen?

Expected behavior

Once enabled (and with Hyper-V/CoworkVMService confirmed healthy), Cowork should remain enabled across reboots and app relaunches.

Error Messages/Logs

### Actual behavior
Cowork setting reverts to disabled every time, regardless of service health, app version, or reboot.

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Claude Desktop on Windows 11 Pro.
2. Enable Cowork.
3. Accept the restart prompt (note: PC restarts immediately with no save-work warning — possibly related/separate issue, see anthropics/claude-code#42855).
4. After reboot, open Claude Desktop.
5. Cowork shows as disabled; re-enabling prompts another restart.
6. Loop repeats indefinitely.

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

------

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

PowerShell

Additional Information

Additional notes

• Initially, Get-Service vmms returned "Cannot find any service with service name 'vmms'" — Hyper-V was not installed at all. After manually enabling it via Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All (elevated) and rebooting, vmms came up running. This did not resolve the toggle persistence issue.
• Suspect this may be an app-level state/config bug rather than a Windows/virtualization issue, given all host-side dependencies check out.
• Have not yet tried a full uninstall + local config wipe + reinstall — flagging this report now in case the diagnostic detail (everything healthy except the toggle) is useful on its own, and will update if a clean reinstall changes the outcome.