Fix for 'VM Service Not Running' error in Cowork on Windows 11

Diagnosing and fixing the virtualization error

A user on r/ClaudeAI reported encountering a 'VM Service Not Running' error in Cowork on Windows 11 Home, particularly when tinkering with MCPs. The error appeared and disappeared randomly. After checking that Hyper-V was installed and running, they discovered the root cause: the hypervisor wasn't set to launch at boot.

Diagnostic command

To check if this is the issue, run this PowerShell command:

bcdedit /enum | findstr -i hypervisor

If the output shows hypervisorlaunchtype Off, that's the problem. The hypervisor needs to be active at the boot level, not just running as a service after Windows loads.

Fix command

To resolve this, run:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

After running this command, perform a full restart of your system and try Cowork again. The user confirmed this fixed their issue after multiple troubleshooting attempts.