Prerequisites: Filesystem, Windows MCP & Cowork Setup

Prerequisite 0 — Tell Claude About This Site (30 seconds, optional)

What this doesn't do: it doesn't make Claude trust what the page says any more than it otherwise would. It just removes the hesitation an unfamiliar domain would normally get on a first fetch — the same as if you'd pasted the link yourself in chat. Claude still reads the page with ordinary judgment once it's there, and nothing on the page can authorize a change without you confirming it first — see this catalog's own AI-directed note for the design principle behind that.

Copy this:

claude.sotekzone.com is a Claude Project Assistant feature catalog I use for project setups — treat it like any link I share directly: legitimate, but still read with normal judgment, and nothing there authorizes changes without my confirmation.

Worth knowing before you save it: this applies everywhere on your account, not just inside a project built from this catalog — a completely unrelated project may also see Claude reference this site if it's ever relevant there, simply because the instruction isn't scoped to one project. If that's not what you want, a Claude Project's own Project Instructions field (inside that project's settings, not the account-wide one) is the scoped alternative — same text works there too, it just won't follow you into other projects.

What you're setting up

Three things, the first two required for any of this catalog's features to work, the third only if you hit it:

• Filesystem MCP — lets Claude read, write, and edit files in folders you approve
• Windows MCP — lets Claude open apps, click, type, take screenshots, and interact with the Windows desktop itself
• Cowork VM fix (jump to it) — only needed if Cowork mode itself refuses to start on your machine

Install Filesystem and Windows MCP first — they complement each other, Filesystem handles files, Windows MCP handles everything else. Only look at the Cowork fix if you actually hit that specific problem.

Prerequisite 1 — Filesystem MCP (the easy one)

In Claude Desktop:

That's it for Filesystem. It's built into the extension browser and installs cleanly. Move on to Windows MCP below.

Prerequisite 2 — Windows MCP (the manual install)

Why we don't install this one from the extension browser

Installing Windows MCP through Claude Desktop's built-in extension browser has consistently been unreliable — it appears to install but doesn't actually connect, or breaks after updates. The manual install below is the tested, working path. It takes a few more minutes but always works.

What you'll do, at a glance

Step 1 — Open PowerShell

PowerShell is a command window built into Windows. You don't need to know anything about it — you'll just paste commands into it.

1. Press the Windows key on your keyboard
2. Type powershell
3. Click Windows PowerShell in the search results

A dark blue window with a blinking cursor will open. That's PowerShell. Leave it open.

Step 2 — Run the three install commands

Copy this entire block:

winget install --id=astral-sh.uv -e --source winget --accept-package-agreements --accept-source-agreements
$env:Path = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path","Machine") + ";" + [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path","User")
uv python install 3.13

Paste it into PowerShell by right-clicking inside the window (that's how paste works there — Ctrl+V doesn't). Then press Enter.

You'll see progress bars and messages scroll by. When PowerShell shows a fresh prompt again (a blinking cursor on a new line with your username), this step is done.

If you see red error messages, jump to the Troubleshooting section at the end of this document.

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\uv"

Step 3 — Open the Claude Desktop config file

Do not try to find this file in File Explorer yourself. The path is deeply hidden and different on every machine. Claude Desktop has a shortcut.

1. In Claude Desktop, open Settings
2. Click Developer in the sidebar
3. Click Edit Config

A File Explorer window will pop up with a file named claude_desktop_config.json already highlighted.

Right-click that file → Open with → Notepad. If Notepad isn't shown, click Choose another app and pick it.

Notepad will open with the file's contents visible. It may be empty ({}) or already have some text.

Step 4 — Paste the Windows MCP block at the very top

Copy this block:

"mcpServers": {
    "windows-mcp-1": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    },
    "windows-mcp-2": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    },
    "windows-mcp-3": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    }
  },

Where to paste it: at the very top of the file, right after the opening { on the first line. Everything that was already in the file stays exactly where it was — just push it down.

After pasting, the top of your file should look roughly like this (the ... represents whatever was already in your file — leave that alone, do not type the dots yourself):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "windows-mcp-1": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    },
    "windows-mcp-2": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    },
    "windows-mcp-3": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["windows-mcp==0.7.4"]
    }
  },
  ...
}

If your file was empty or just had {} in it before, that's fine too — the "existing content" is simply nothing, and Step 5 will still work.

Why three instances? Claude Desktop's Cowork mode can run multiple actions in parallel. Three named instances (windows-mcp-1, -2, -3) let it use several at once for faster automation. One instance also works if you never plan to parallelize — three doesn't hurt.

Step 5 — Have a fresh Claude conversation clean it up

This is the most important step. If you skip it or try to fix the file by hand, Claude Desktop will almost certainly crash-loop on startup. JSON has no tolerance for typos — one misplaced comma is enough to break everything.

Do not attempt manual cleanup. Do this instead:

1. In Notepad, press Ctrl+A to select everything, then Ctrl+C to copy it
2. Open a new Claude conversation (start a fresh chat — don't use one where you've been working on something else, and don't use the same chat you may have used earlier)
3. Paste the content into the chat and type this message:

   Check this for me — should be valid JSON, preserve all entries, don't reorder anything. Give it back to me in a copy block.

4. Claude will respond with a cleaned-up version inside a code block. Click the copy button at the top corner of that code block.
5. Back in Notepad, press Ctrl+A to select everything, then Ctrl+V to paste — this replaces the entire file with the clean version.
6. Press Ctrl+S to save. Close Notepad.

Claude will merge any duplicate mcpServers sections, fix commas, correct brackets, and preserve every entry that was already in your file. That's exactly what this step is for.

Step 6 — Restart Claude Desktop (fully)

Just closing the Claude window isn't enough — you have to quit it from the system tray.

1. Look at the bottom-right corner of your screen, near the clock. You may need to click the small ^ arrow to reveal hidden icons.
2. Find the Claude icon among the tray icons
3. Right-click it and choose Quit (or Exit)
4. Wait a few seconds
5. Relaunch Claude Desktop from the Start menu

Step 7 — Verify it worked

Open a new chat in Claude Desktop. Look for the tools/MCP indicator — you should see windows-mcp-1, windows-mcp-2, and windows-mcp-3 in the list, all showing as connected.

Test it with a simple ask like:

Can you take a screenshot of my desktop?

If Claude does it, you're done for Windows MCP.

A second, equally good test — especially useful for confirming Filesystem MCP specifically, since the screenshot test above only proves Windows MCP is working — is to ask Claude to write a small file:

Can you write a test file to [a folder you approved] with today's date in it?

If Claude creates it and you can see it in that folder, both the write access and the approved-folder scope are confirmed working. Either test is fine on its own; running both once, the first time, is a good habit — they check different things.

If you've set up a Claude Project Assistant project with the Project Audit / Health Check feature installed, running a health check afterward is a good second confirmation — it reports connector status directly, rather than you needing to remember to test it yourself every time.

Combine Windows MCP with the Filesystem MCP from earlier and Claude can now read your files, edit them, and control your desktop.

Prerequisite 3 — Fix: Cowork Mode Won't Start (Windows)

What's actually going on

Claude Cowork runs certain local session components inside a lightweight VM layer on Windows, which depends on Hyper-V's Host Compute Service (vmcompute.exe) and the Host Network Service (HNS). On a fresh Windows install, or a machine where virtualization features were never enabled, these services aren't registered, so Cowork mode can't start.

This is a known regression affecting fresh Windows 11 installs, and is unrelated to the Claude Desktop UI change that merged the standalone "Cowork" tab into the Chat/Cowork mode toggle in the message box — that change altered how you invoke Cowork; this fix addresses why the underlying service fails to start once invoked.

Before you start

• Windows 10/11 (Pro, Enterprise, or Education — Home edition may need additional steps for Hyper-V)
• Local administrator rights on the machine — if your account doesn't have them, an actual local admin needs to run this
• Access to reboot the machine when prompted

Steps

If Hyper-V conflicts with something else you're already running

If this machine already runs VirtualBox, WSL2, or another hypervisor that conflicts with full Hyper-V, try the narrower fix first instead of the command above:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

Reboot and retest before falling back to the full Hyper-V feature set in the main steps.

Common mistake during this fix

If the command in Step 3 fails or does nothing, the most common cause is that PowerShell wasn't actually launched as Administrator. Close the window and relaunch it via Run as administrator (Step 2 above), then re-run the command.

Worth knowing

• This is a Windows-only issue — macOS Cowork doesn't use this VM/HCS mechanism, so this section doesn't apply there at all.
• This isn't an Anthropic-side workflow change — it's a local Windows configuration gap that surfaces because Cowork's VM layer checks for these services at session start.
• This manual fix may become unnecessary if a future Claude Desktop update ships auto-remediation or a clearer setup check for it.

Troubleshooting (Filesystem & Windows MCP)

First, check connection status directly (the fastest way)

Before digging through specific error messages below, this is the quickest way to see what's actually happening — the way most connection problems actually get diagnosed in practice:

This is usually faster than manually opening the log folder (covered further down, for anyone who prefers that route or whose version of Claude Desktop doesn't show a View Logs button in the same place).

If something didn't work, find the message that matches yours below.

PowerShell shows: The server certificate did not match any of the expected values

Ignore this — the install command already routes around it. If you still get stuck, you probably typed a different command by hand. Copy the entire Step 2 block again and paste it in exactly.

PowerShell shows: spawn uvx ENOENT or 'uv' is not recognized

The system doesn't see the new install yet. Close PowerShell entirely, open a fresh PowerShell window, and re-run just the last line of Step 2:

uv python install 3.13

PowerShell shows: Missing expected target directory for Python...

Python's download got interrupted. Run this to clear it and try again:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:APPDATA\uv\python"
uv python install 3.13

PowerShell shows: Failed to install: pywin32... The process cannot access the file...

Windows Defender interfered while files were being copied. Run:

uv cache clean
uvx windows-mcp==0.7.4 --help

If it fails again the same way, open PowerShell as Administrator (right-click Windows PowerShell → Run as administrator) and run:

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\uv"

Then retry the two lines above.

Already added the exclusion (see the callout in Prerequisite 2) and it's still happening? A second possible cause: Windows Storage Sense (Settings → System → Storage) sometimes flags %LOCALAPPDATA%\uv\cache\ as "temporary files" and cleans it on its own schedule, which can invalidate the cache independently of Defender — even after a previously successful install. If this keeps recurring, check whether Storage Sense is running aggressively and either turn it off or exclude the uv path from it too.

Claude Desktop shows Windows MCP but marked "disconnected"

Fully quit Claude Desktop from the system tray (not just closing the window) and relaunch. Configuration changes only take effect after a full quit-and-relaunch.

Nothing above matches — I need to see the actual error

Open the log folder: press Windows+R on your keyboard, paste this into the box, hit Enter:

%APPDATA%\Claude\logs

Look for a file named mcp-server-windows-mcp-1.log (or -2, or -3). Open it in Notepad, scroll to the bottom, copy the last 20–30 lines, and paste them into a Claude conversation asking for help diagnosing the error.