Windows: GPU process crashes (exit code 101457950) whenever Cloudflare Turnstile renders; main process then hangs unkillable until MSIX Repair

Environment

• Claude desktop app (MSIX / winget install): 1.34493.1, bundled Claude Code 2.1.237
• Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200, x64, 16 GB RAM
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070. Reproduced on driver 32.0.15.9186 (Jan 2026) and after a clean update to 32.0.16.1088 (Jul 2026)

Summary

Whenever a Cloudflare Turnstile widget (challenges.cloudflare.com) renders inside the app, the Electron GPU process crashes, always with the exact same exit code 101457950 (0x060C201E). This triggers in two distinct places:

1. In the integrated Browser pane, on any site behind Cloudflare's "Just a moment..." interstitial: the GPU process dies within seconds of the interstitial appearing.
2. With no Browser pane at all, when claude.ai itself serves /api/challenge_redirect inside the app's own view and the Turnstile widget loads.

6 occurrences over 2 days; 4 were captured in main.log with the identical exit code (the other 2 froze the app before the line could be flushed). A very light page (example.com) in the Browser pane stayed stable for minutes; the crash correlates specifically with Turnstile loading.

After the GPU crash: unrecoverable hang

After GPU process gone, main.log stops entirely (even the 60-second process-memory interval logging). The window becomes unresponsive. Relaunching the app does nothing: the frozen instance holds the single-instance lock. The frozen process cannot be terminated by Task Manager or taskkill /F /T (it appears stuck in a kernel call). After a reboot, Windows' "restart apps at sign-in" relaunches the app and it freezes again before writing a single log line.

The only recovery that works is Settings > Installed apps > Claude > Advanced options > Repair, which force-closes the package processes. A scripted Add-AppxPackage -Register <InstallLocation>\AppxManifest.xml without -ForceApplicationShutdown fails with 0x80073D02 because the frozen process still counts as running.

Ruled out

• NVIDIA driver version: reproduced before and after a clean driver update.
• Stale shader caches: reproduced minutes after deleting GPUCache, DawnGraphiteCache and DawnWebGPUCache (all recreated fresh).

Possibly relevant

Right before the first crash, the renderer logged twice:

The powerPreference option is currently ignored when calling requestAdapter() on Windows. See https://crbug.com/369219127

which suggests the crash happens during Turnstile's WebGPU/WebGL fingerprinting probes (Dawn). Windows WER on this machine also shows queued LiveKernelEvent 141/117/193 (video engine timeout) reports, so an interaction with this GPU/driver stack is plausible. Still, the part that makes the app unusable is the failure to recover: a GPU process crash should not leave the main process frozen and unkillable.

Log excerpts (main.log, session ids redacted)

Crash with no Browser pane involved, claude.ai's own challenge:

2026-08-24 18:01:55 [warn] Blocked permission check {
  permission: 'notifications',
  requestingOrigin: 'https://challenges.cloudflare.com/',
  requestingUrl: 'https://challenges.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/challenge-platform/h/b/turnstile/f/av0/rch/2b1wt/0x4AAAAAAADnPIDROrmt1Wwj/dark/fbE/new/normal?lang=auto',
  isMainFrame: false,
  topFrameUrl: 'https://claude.ai/api/challenge_redirect?to=https%3A%2F%2Fclaude.ai%2Fepitaxy%2F<redacted>'
}
2026-08-24 18:01:56 [info] GPU process gone: {
  type: 'GPU',
  reason: 'crashed',
  exitCode: 101457950,
  serviceName: 'GPU'
}

(nothing further is ever logged by this instance)

Earlier crash in the Browser pane, seconds after navigating to a Cloudflare-protected site:

2026-08-23 23:20:43 [info] GPU process gone: {
  type: 'GPU',
  reason: 'crashed',
  exitCode: 101457950,
  serviceName: 'GPU'
}

Steps to reproduce

1. Windows machine with an NVIDIA GPU (RTX 3070 here).
2. Open the Browser pane and navigate to any site that shows Cloudflare's "Just a moment..." interstitial.
3. GPU process crashes within seconds; the app UI freezes; the app cannot be relaunched or killed until an MSIX Repair is performed.

Alternatively, the same crash occurs without the Browser pane whenever claude.ai serves a challenge_redirect (Turnstile) inside the app.

Expected

Either the Turnstile/WebGPU crash doesn't happen, or at minimum the app recovers from a GPU process crash (Chromium normally restarts the GPU process) instead of freezing into an unkillable state that requires an MSIX Repair.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code