[BUG] Failed to start Claude's workspace

[vsnmic]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Failed to start Claude's workspace
HCS operation failed: failed to create compute system: HcsWaitForOperationResult failed with HRESULT 0x80070005: {"Error":-2147024891,"ErrorMessage":"","Attribution":[{"OperationFailure":{"Detail":"Construct"}}]}
Restarting Claude or your computer sometimes resolves this. If it persists, you can reinstall the workspace.

What Should Happen?

I follow all these and not fixed:
This is a Windows HCS (Host Compute Service) error — 0x80070005 means Access Denied. It's a Hyper-V/container permissions issue, not a Claude Code bug per se.

Try these steps in order:

1. Run Claude Code as Administrator
   Right-click → "Run as administrator"

2. Restart the HCS service
   Open an elevated PowerShell and run:

Restart-Service vmcompute
Restart-Service vmms

3. Check Hyper-V is enabled

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V

If not enabled:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

Then reboot.

4. Check Windows Containers feature

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Containers -All

5. If still failing — clean up stale compute systems

Get-ComputeProcess | Stop-ComputeProcess -Force

Or via hcsdiag.exe:

hcsdiag list
hcsdiag kill # for any stale entries

6. Full reset
   If nothing works, try:

Uninstall Claude Code completely
Reboot
Reinstall
The most common fix for 0x80070005 is step 2 (restarting vmcompute service) or running as admin.

If the issue persists, I'd recommend reporting it at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues with your Windows version details — it may be a known issue with specific Windows 11 builds.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

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How can I help you today?

Failed to start Claude's workspace
HCS operation failed: failed to create compute system: HcsWaitForOperationResult failed with HRESULT 0x80070005: {"Error":-2147024891,"ErrorMessage":"","Attribution":[{"OperationFailure":{"Detail":"Construct"}}]}
Restarting Claude or your computer sometimes resolves this. If it persists, you can reinstall the workspace.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

No, this never worked

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

Version 1.1.8629 (befdfc)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

No response

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. Cowork VM: HCS 0x80070005 (Access Denied) on Win11 25H2 - MSIX SYSTEM ACL missing #38188
2. Cowork VM: HCS 0x800701c0 Construct failure when Windows "Containers" feature is enabled (MSIX, Win11 25H2) #37068
3. [BUG] Failed to start Claude's workspace VM service not running. The service failed to start. #31703

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

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[github-actions]

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.