Core Isolation turned off due to WDCSAM64_PREWIN8.SYS incompatibility

Anonymous
2022-09-02T19:09:56+00:00

I have been running Windows 11 successfully on my Microsoft Surface for some time now with no problems.

Within the last day or so, I all of a sudden got a notification that Core Isolation has been disabled due to an incompatible driver, WDCSAM64_PREWIN8.SYS.

From what I can see, this driver is related to Western Digital. However, I do not have any Western Digital devices attached to my Surface, nor have I recently added/installed anything from Western Digital.

I have tried searching for this driver but have come up empty.

Surface | Surface Pro | Safety and security

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Anonymous
2022-11-28T10:37:21+00:00
  1. Select the Startbutton and type “Core isolation”.
  2. Select the Core Isolation system settings from the search results to open the Windows security app.

On the Core isolation page, you’ll find Memory integrity along with the toggle to turn it on

  • If you receive a notification / message says that the memory integrity can't be turn on follow the below steps.
  1. Try to scan and fix.
  2. If it is not solved, please click on "Review any driver incompatibilities".

3.We can see a driver or more.

  1. Please note the published name here is "oem46.inf"
  2. Select the Start button and type “Device Manager" and follow as shown below.

  1. Select the right driver from Device manager"oem46.inf" and right click and select remove driver.

Example :-

7. System needs to be restarted after removal of the driver.

Hopefully this will solve your issues no need to install any software for this.

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-12-12T16:02:48+00:00

    This is how I resolved that exact same problem:

    1. Open the command window as administrator by typing cmd in Windows search, right-click it, and select "run as administrator"
    2. Type pnputil /enum-drivers (there must be a space before the slash). This will show a list of all drivers on the PC. Look for drivers from Western Digital. In my case there was only one, called oem33.inf that showed up near the end of the very long list of drivers.
    3. In the Windows Device Manager, check if there are any Western Digital drivers shown that are used on your PC. In my case, there was none (my ROM drive uses a Samsung driver).
    4. Now it's time to delete the offending driver by typing pnputil /delete-driver oemXX.inf (in my case oem33.inf). Maybe that driver was sitting on your PC because you used an external Western Digital drive. If that drive will get connected again in the future, the PC will install a driver, and maybe you have to repeat the above clean-up process again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-12-11T09:06:27+00:00

    I deleted the offending driver. No problems afterwards. Problem solved.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-12-11T08:41:51+00:00

    I had the same error / driver issue on a laptop running Windows 11. However a Windows 11 major update today (11th Dec) has cured the problem before I could resort to one of the solutions covered above.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-12-08T15:21:15+00:00

    Paul,
    I tend to agree with you - but I was curious if you happened to notice how they fixed it. Did they also delete the offending driver(s), or did they actually install an update or updated driver?

    Thanks,
    Jason

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