Claude Cowork on a Second Account: Fix "VHDX File Not Found"

Short answer: Cowork can work on a second Claude account, but two separate things get in the way on Windows:

"VHDX file not found" - for an extra account with its own data folder, Claude downloads the Cowork virtual machine into one folder and looks for it in another. Link the files to where Cowork looks, and redo it when Claude renews the image.
"Virtualization is not available" - Windows runs only one Cowork virtual machine per Windows user, so only one account can use Cowork at a time.

The error

Your main Claude account runs Cowork fine. The second account - a second Claude window with its own data folder, as described in How to use multiple Claude accounts at once on Windows - downloads the workspace, then stops with:

failed to set VHDX path: VHDX file not found:
C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\LocalCache\Roaming\Work\vm_bundles\claudevm.bundle\rootfs.vhdx

Restarting Claude does not help. Restarting Windows does not help. Reinstall the workspace downloads everything again and fails the same way.

Why: the image is saved in one folder and looked for in another

Claude Desktop for Windows is installed as a Windows app package. What it writes under AppData\Roaming is redirected into its own folder, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\LocalCache\Roaming\. Two parts of Claude then disagree on where the Cowork image goes:

The download keeps the full path of your data folder - for a folder %AppData%\ClaudeProfiles\Work, it lands in …\LocalCache\Roaming\ClaudeProfiles\Work\vm_bundles\claudevm.bundle.
The Cowork service keeps only the last part of the name, and looks in …\LocalCache\Roaming\Work\vm_bundles\claudevm.bundle.

Two folders, the image in one, Cowork looking in the other. Your main account is not affected because it uses Claude's own folder, where both rules give the same path. A related path mismatch was reported to Anthropic in #52540.

Why it comes back after you fixed it

Claude renews the Cowork image from time to time - a new virtual machine version, or Reinstall the workspace. It deletes the image and downloads a new one, on the download side only. Whatever you placed where Cowork looks is now missing or out of date, and the error returns. That is why a one-time copy is not enough.

The free fix: put the image where Cowork looks

The idea: make the image files appear in the folder Cowork reads, without copying 9 GB. Hard links do exactly that - one file, two names, no extra disk space. (Claude refuses symbolic links and junctions in this folder, so those will not work.)

Let the download finish. The image arrives compressed (about 1.3 GB), then unpacks to about 9 GB. If the folder still contains files named .wvm-tmp-…, it is not done.
Close that account's Claude window completely.
Note where Cowork looks: the folder in the error message, ending in claudevm.bundle.

Find where the image really is in PowerShell:

Get-ChildItem "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\Claude_*\LocalCache\Roaming" -Recurse -Filter rootfs.vhdx -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Select-Object FullName, LastWriteTime

Pick the one under your data folder's full path, and keep the folder part (ending in claudevm.bundle).

Link the files, with your two folders filled in. The first command sets any old image aside (renamed .old); the second links the new one. Neither touches sessiondata.vhdx.

$actual   = "C:\…\LocalCache\Roaming\ClaudeProfiles\Work\vm_bundles\claudevm.bundle"
$expected = "C:\…\LocalCache\Roaming\Work\vm_bundles\claudevm.bundle"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force $expected | Out-Null
Get-ChildItem $expected -File -Force | Where-Object Name -ne 'sessiondata.vhdx' |
  Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name + '.old' }
Get-ChildItem $actual -File -Force | Where-Object Name -ne 'sessiondata.vhdx' |
  ForEach-Object { New-Item -ItemType HardLink -Path (Join-Path $expected $_.Name) -Target $_.FullName | Out-Null }

Open the account again and start Cowork. Once it works, you can delete the .old files.

Never delete, replace or link sessiondata.vhdx. It holds that account's own Cowork session data, and unlike the image it cannot be downloaded again. Everything else in the folder is the image, the same for everyone.

Repeat steps 1 to 6 whenever Claude renews the image and the error comes back.

Claude Desktop Manager does this every time a profile starts

Claude Desktop Manager keeps both folders in sync for each extra profile, so you never see the error in the first place:

On every launch, and for 30 minutes afterwards, so an image that is still downloading or unpacking is picked up once it is complete.
The image is handled as a whole: the complete, most recent one is linked to the other side, files and version markers together, so two versions are never mixed.
Nothing moves during a download, and sessiondata.vhdx is never touched.
Repair Cowork… in the profile's options runs the same sync on demand and tells you what it linked, updated or removed. Close the profile first: files held open by a running virtual machine cannot be replaced.

A side effect: if the two folders had drifted apart and held two different images, they share one again. On our test PC that freed about 8 GB.

Download free Windows 10 / 11 · x64 & ARM64 · requires Claude Desktop

🖥️ Windows app - download it from a PC. This page reads fine on a phone, but the installer only runs on Windows 10 / 11.

"Virtualization is not available": one Cowork at a time

Once both accounts have their image, a second limit appears: start Cowork in one account while it runs in the other, and the second says "Virtualization is not available" or "Workspace unavailable. The isolated Linux environment on this device failed to start." Virtualization is fine. The real error, in C:\ProgramData\Claude\Logs\cowork-service.log, is 0x8037010f: a virtual machine with the same identifier already exists.

Claude names the Cowork virtual machine after the Windows user, not after the Claude account. Every account on the same Windows user asks for the same machine, so only one can have it (#67972, #98613). Anthropic marked #98613 as completed on 1 October 2026; on Claude Desktop 2.19675, our logs still showed the same identifier for every account on 6 October.

Use Cowork in one account at a time. Chat and Claude Code work in all of them at once.
Closing Claude does not always free it. The virtual machine waits for an idle timeout before stopping, and in our service logs it actually stopped only about once in seven times. If the other account still cannot start Cowork, restart Windows.
Since the identifier comes from the Windows user, a separate Windows user account gets a virtual machine of its own.

The two errors at a glance

Message	Cause	Fix
failed to set VHDX path: VHDX file not found	Image downloaded into one folder, looked for in another	Hard-link the image where Cowork looks, again after each renewal - or let Claude Desktop Manager do it
Virtualization is not available / Workspace unavailable on the second account	One Cowork virtual machine per Windows user, already used by the other account	Stop Cowork in the other account; restart Windows if it stays stuck

Frequently asked questions

Can I use Claude Cowork with two accounts?

Yes, one at a time. Each account needs the Cowork image where Cowork looks for it, and Windows runs a single Cowork virtual machine per Windows user, so while Cowork runs in one account it cannot start in the other.

What does "failed to set VHDX path: VHDX file not found" mean?

On an extra Claude account with its own data folder, Claude downloads the Cowork virtual machine into a folder named after the full path of that data folder, but the Cowork service looks in a folder named after its last part only. Hard-linking the image files into the folder from the error message fixes it, until Claude renews the image.

Will "Reinstall the workspace" fix VHDX file not found?

No. It downloads the image again into the same download folder, so Cowork still looks in the other one and the error stays.

Why does Cowork say "Virtualization is not available" on my second account?

Because Cowork is already running in another account on the same Windows user. The Cowork virtual machine is named after the Windows user, so the second account cannot create its own. Stop Cowork in the first account, and restart Windows if the second still cannot start it.

Is it safe to delete sessiondata.vhdx?

No. It holds that account's own Cowork session data and cannot be downloaded again. Only the image files (rootfs.vhdx, initrd, vmlinuz, smol-bin.vhdx and their markers) can be replaced.

Can two Claude accounts run Cowork at the same time on one PC?

Not under the same Windows user, as of October 2026: both accounts ask for the same Cowork virtual machine. Chat and Claude Code, on the other hand, run in every account at once.

Cowork on every profile, without the maintenance

Free to download. Standard ($10, one-time purchase) runs two Claude windows at the same time with no time limit. Pro ($30, one-time) removes all limits and adds QuickPrompt and QuickAsk.

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🖥️ Windows app - download it from a PC. The installer only runs on Windows 10 / 11.