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
    2022-09-15T18:49:06+00:00

    I had this problem to. Windows Defender showed that an incompatible driver "wdcsam64_prewin8.sys" had disabled core isolation. After getting some hints from this community thread I tried to locate the offending driver by accessing Powershell, using 'pnputil /enum-drivers' at the Command Prompt (as Admin). Couldn't find that particular Driver but found another also from Western Digital Technologies with the published name of 'oem36.inf' (original name: wdscam.inf). After a great deal of inner debate, I decided to delete this driver - it's original name (wdsam.inf) was close enough to the one I was looking for - and it worked. The threat to core isolation disappeared and I'm a happy man again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-15T14:46:24+00:00

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-15T10:31:28+00:00

    Support helped me: Found the unused driver and deleted it.

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