Windows: GPU process crashes and app restarts whenever a preview pane renders (Claude Desktop 1.40609.0)

Claude Desktop: GPU process crashes when a preview pane renders, app restarts

Summary

On Windows 11 with an NVIDIA RTX 3070, the Claude Desktop GPU process crashes
and the app relaunches itself. It reproduces when a preview pane is created,
which happens whenever I open a subagent that carries the browser toolset. It
has happened four times today.

Persists after a clean NVIDIA driver install, including the driver whose release
notes list a Claude Desktop fix.

Environment

| | |
|---|---|
| Claude Desktop | 1.40609.0 (MSIX, Claude_1.40609.0.0_x64__pzs8sxrjxfjjc) |
| OS | Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200 |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 |
| Driver before | 32.0.15.9186 (dated 2026-01-19) |
| Driver after | 32.0.16.1656 / Studio 616.56 (dated 2026-08-26) |
| Display | 2560x1440 |

What happens

The GPU process exits with reason: 'crashed', the window goes down, and the
app restarts on its own. No Crashpad minidump is written and there is no
claude.exe entry in the Windows Application event log, so the crash leaves no
artifact outside the app's own log.

Occurrences, all 2026-09-01

| Time | exitCode | Driver at the time |
|---|---|---|
| 09:38:50 | 101457950 | 32.0.15.9186 |
| 09:46:09 | 101457950 | 32.0.15.9186 |
| 10:03:30 | 34 | during driver install |
| 11:48:39 | 101457950 | 32.0.16.1656 |

Correlation: a preview pane renders 1 to 4 seconds before every crash

Instance at 09:46:09:

09:46:05 [info] [Preview] Created session preview context {
  previewId: 'preview-local_afce282b-5c41-4e66-9231-b6543f6a08ea',
  totalContexts: 1
}
09:46:05 [info] [Preview] Created browser preview { serverId: 'browser-preview-1788273965306-0' }
09:46:07 [info] [oauth] using cached token
09:46:09 [info] GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }
09:47:05 [info] Starting app { appVersion: '1.40609.0' }

Instance at 11:48:39, after the driver update:

11:48:38 [warn] [PreviewContext] Blocked subresource to private-resolving host { resourceType: 'xhr' }
11:48:39 [info] GPU process gone: { type: 'GPU', reason: 'crashed', exitCode: 101457950, serviceName: 'GPU' }
11:50:18 [info] Starting app { appVersion: '1.40609.0' }

There is also a [PreviewContext] Max retries reached, giving up at 09:32:20,
so the preview surface appears to be unhealthy before it takes the GPU process
down.

Ruled out

• Memory. At 11:48:39 the process tree was 4,738 MB with 10.6 GB system free.

At 10:03:30 it was 6,694 MB with 10,614 MB free. No resource-exhaustion events.

• Graphics driver. Reproduced on 32.0.16.1656 after a clean install with

"Perform a clean installation" checked. Notably, the 616.56 release notes list
a fix for "Claude Desktop: Driver incorrectly detects application as a 3D app
[6468260]", which did not resolve this.

• OS-level display fault. No TDR events (System log id 4101) at any point.

Only the app's GPU process dies; the display driver itself never resets.

Separate issue seen in the same logs

On 2026-08-31 at 15:59:59 the whole child-process tree was killed at once, with a
different signature. Including it in case it is related.

15:59:59 [System]  The Claude service terminated unexpectedly (event 7034)
15:59:59 [error]   Network Service process gone (reason=killed, exitCode=1) outside app quit
15:59:59 [error]   Claude Code process exited with code 1   x4 sessions
15:59:59 [warn]    pty-host worker exited (1) with 4 live PTY(s)
16:00:25 [AppX]    Deployment Register operation on Package Claude_1.40609.0.0 finished successfully

Windows re-registered the MSIX package 26 seconds after killing the service. The
AppXDeploymentServer log shows the Claude package being re-registered ten times
in one day, and 5,326 deployment events over four days, driven by a retry loop
on an unrelated stale package that Windows cannot delete. If Claude Desktop can
survive package servicing without losing its service and every child process,
that would be worth hardening.

Recurring error, possibly related to the MSIX packaging

This one repeats several times an hour, every hour, going back days:

[error] [Chrome Extension MCP] Failed to copy native host binary:
Error: EBUSY: resource busy or locked, copyfile
'C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Claude_1.40609.0.0_x64__pzs8sxrjxfjjc\app\resources\chrome-nat...'

Ask

A way to disable hardware acceleration would let me work around this today. I
looked through the app config and found no such key, and the app is MSIX
packaged so passing --disable-gpu on the command line is not straightforward.

Log location

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude\Logs\main.log

Happy to send the full log or run any diagnostic.