Claude Desktop (Windows): GPU process repeatedly crashes with identical exit code during Browser preview use

Environment

• Claude Desktop version: 1.30096.5 (MSIX/Windows Store install)
• CCD version: 2.1.229
• Node version: 24.18.0
• OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, x64
• GPUs: hybrid graphics — Intel UHD Graphics 630 (driver 31.0.101.2141) + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (driver 32.0.16.1088)

What happened

The GPU process has crashed 3 times in one evening, always with the identical signature:

GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }

Occurrences (from main.log):

• 2026-08-15 21:23:27 — app auto-restarted at 21:32:06
• 2026-08-15 21:38:11 — app auto-restarted at 21:51:30
• 2026-08-15 22:06:12 — app did not recover; stayed unusable until manually relaunched at 02:32:46 (~4.5 hours later)

Correlation

All three crashes occurred within seconds of the in-app Browser preview pane being active ([PreviewContext] tab activity / subresource-blocking warnings immediately precede each crash), suggesting GPU compositing load from that feature is the trigger.

Ruled out

• Not memory pressure — 11–15GB free of 32GB system RAM at each crash.
• Not a stale driver — both GPU drivers are current (dated within the last few months).

Missing diagnostics

• Crashpad's report folder was empty at the time of investigation — no minidump was generated for any of the three crashes, so there's no stack trace beyond the log line above.

Suspected root cause

Hybrid-graphics GPU handoff/switching (Intel iGPU ↔ NVIDIA dGPU) during heavy Chromium compositing in the Browser preview pane.