Windows: GPU process crash (exit 101457950) kills entire app when Browser pane composites heavy page; MSIX then fails to relaunch

Summary

Opening the embedded Browser pane (preview_start) on a heavy page (Tebex store page with Cloudflare challenge / WebGL) crashes the Electron GPU process the moment the pane becomes visible and starts compositing — and the entire desktop app dies with it. Reproduced 3 times with the identical exit code. After the crash, Windows sometimes refuses to relaunch the app ("There is a problem with Claude. Reinstall the app...") and the MSIX package has to be reinstalled.

A light page (example.com) in the same pane renders fine. The same Tebex page opens normally in regular Chrome on the same machine (Chrome recovers/restarts its GPU process; Claude Desktop does not).

Environment

• Claude Desktop (MSIX) 1.28929.0 — also occurred on 1.26832.0 (Aug 10-11)
• Windows 10 Pro 19045
• NVIDIA RTX 3080 — crash identical on driver 610.88 and 610.47 (rollback tested, driver ruled out)

Log signature (%APPDATA%\Claude\logs\main.log)

Same sequence all 3 times:

2026-08-12 21:59:12 [warn] [PreviewContext] Blocked subresource to private-resolving host { resourceType: 'xhr' }
2026-08-12 21:59:12 [info] GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }

2026-08-12 22:12:38 [warn] [PreviewContext] Blocked subresource to private-resolving host { resourceType: 'xhr' }
2026-08-12 22:12:39 [info] GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }

2026-08-12 22:35:37 [warn] [PreviewContext] Blocked subresource to private-resolving host { resourceType: 'xhr' }
2026-08-12 22:35:37 [info] GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }

Earlier occurrences (app 1.26832.0, Aug 10-11): storms of GPU process gone (exit codes -1073741205, 34, 1073807364) together with Network Service process gone (reason=crashed, exitCode=-1073741205) outside app quit — main-process networking is broken until relaunch, during local HTML preview usage.

Steps to reproduce

1. Windows 10 + NVIDIA GPU
2. Ask Claude to open the Browser pane at https://energy-shop-fivem.tebex.io/package/7431697 (any page behind a Cloudflare challenge seems to do it)
3. Click the pane so it becomes visible
4. App crashes immediately during compositing

Expected

• A GPU process crash should not take down the whole app (Chromium normally restarts the GPU process)
• After a crash, the MSIX package should still launch without requiring reinstallation
• A "disable hardware acceleration" option in the desktop app would help as a workaround

🤖 Generated with Claude Code