If you’re on Windows and use Cowork, you’ve probably seen these lovely messages:
RPC error -1: failed to ensure virtiofs mount: Plan9 mount failed: bad address
VM service not running. The service failed to start.
or other stuff related to demon or other claude service
Every. Single. Time. The only fix? Reboot the whole PC. Closing Claude doesn’t help. Reopening doesn’t help. Kill process dosen’t help. The VM service gets stuck in a broken state and the app just refuses to recover on its own.
After losing my sanity (and a lot of time) to this, I wrote a simple PowerShell script that does what a reboot does — but in 10 seconds instead of 5 minutes:
- Kills all Claude processes
- Force-stops the CoworkVMService (with taskkill fallback when it hangs, because of course it hangs)
- Optionally nukes the VM cache for VirtioFS errors
- Restarts the service
- Relaunches Claude Desktop Just drop it on your desktop, double-click when Cowork breaks, answer one Y/N question, done. It doesn’t touch your config, MCP servers, or conversations — only the VM runtime files. GitHub: https://github.com/Onimir89/Restart_claude/ Hope this saves someone else a few reboots and a lot of swearing. submitted by /u/onimir3989
Originally posted by u/onimir3989 on r/ClaudeCode
You must log in or # to comment.