Desktop app (Windows): GPU process crashes when opening in-app Browser preview pane, entire window closes

Summary

On the Windows desktop app (Cowork), opening the in-app Browser preview pane reliably crashes Electron's GPU process, which takes down the entire app window with no error message shown to the user. The main window simply closes and the app relaunches.

Environment

• App: Claude desktop 1.28929.0 (Microsoft Store install), updated to latest ~2h before the most recent repro
• OS: Windows 11 Pro, build 10.0.26200
• GPUs: Intel UHD Graphics 770 (driver 32.0.101.7085) + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (driver 32.0.15.9595) — both drivers freshly updated during troubleshooting
• RAM: 64 GB (system memory pressure ruled out; ~31 GB free at crash time per the app's own [process-memory] log lines)

Symptom

main.log records GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed' } and the whole window closes. Observed exit codes: 101457950 (most crashes) and 34 (one instance). 18+ occurrences over roughly two weeks; the earliest occurrences appear in the log covering Jul 29–Aug 8, none before that.

Reproduction

1. Start a Cowork session.
2. Trigger anything that opens the in-app Browser preview pane.
3. GPU process crashes within seconds; window closes.

Log excerpt from the most recent crash (timestamps local, redacted):

21:31:01 [info] [Preview] Created session preview context { previewId: 'preview-local_...' }
21:31:01 [info] [Preview] Created browser preview { serverId: 'browser-preview-...' }
21:31:04 [warn] [PreviewContext] Blocked subresource to private-resolving host { resourceType: 'xhr' }
21:31:04 [info] GPU process gone: {
  type: 'GPU',
  reason: 'crashed',
  exitCode: 101457950,
  serviceName: 'GPU'
}

The app is otherwise stable — chat, terminal, and file operations run indefinitely without issue. The crash correlates specifically with browser preview creation.

Ruled out during troubleshooting

• GPU driver versions — crash reproduced before and after updating both Intel and NVIDIA drivers (exit code changed from 101457950 to 34 once post-update, then reverted to 101457950)
• Pending reboot — reproduced after a full reboot with new drivers active
• Stale shader caches — deleted all GPUCache / DawnWebGPUCache folders under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_...\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude with the app closed; caches rebuilt fresh; crash reproduced ~2 minutes later when the browser preview opened
• Windows GPU preference — reproduced after pinning the app to High performance (NVIDIA) in Windows graphics settings
• System memory pressure — 31+ GB free at crash time; app process tree ~1.8 GB

Notes

• No Crashpad reports are generated (Crashpad folder contains only settings.dat), so there are no minidumps to attach — the GPU process gone log lines are the only artifact.
• Happy to provide fuller logs or run a diagnostic build on request.