Windows comes with Core Isolation, creating a separate and secure area on your system to run drivers and memory processes to protect them from malware and other attacks. Many users reported that suddenly, they got an alert saying – Core Isolation had been disabled due to an incompatible driver.
If you also got a similar alert saying your system’s Core Isolation has been turned off, read this guide until the end. This guide shows you how to remove incompatible drivers from the system and enable the Core Isolation features again.
Why Does the Core Isolation Turn Off?
Core Isolation usually gets disabled automatically due to incompatible drivers. Most users in Microsoft’s community reported that their system’s Core Isolation got disabled because of these mentioned system drivers:
- WDCSAM64_PREWIN8.SYS
- Oem33.inf
- Oem27.inf
- BrUsbSlb.sys
- AiCharger.sys
- Oem25.inf
Fix: Core Isolation Turned Off Due to Driver Incompatibility
Below are some easy methods to quickly remove incompatible drivers from your Windows system:
- Auto Run
- Device Manager
- PowerShell or Windows Terminal
1] Autoruns
One way to remove incompatible drivers from the Windows system is using Microsoft’s Autoruns utility. The Autoruns utility lets you manage all your system components, like drivers, services, registries, and much more, under one roof for easy access and management.
You can also use Autoruns to uninstall the incompatibility drivers from your Windows 11/10 PC. Follow the below-mentioned steps to remove the incompatible drivers:
- Click here to go to Autoruns’s download page and click Download Autoruns and Autorunsc.
- Click the Save button in the Save As prompt to download the Autoruns.zip file on your PC.
- Once the file is downloaded, click on it, and double-click on Autoruns.exe in the next window.
- You must extract the downloaded ZIP file now and install Autoruns on your Windows PC.
- Once done, open the Autoruns utility on your Windows system and move to its Drivers tab.
- Find the incompatible driver mentioned in your received alert in the Driver tab.
- Right-click on it and select the Delete option to delete the affected driver.
Once you’ve removed the incompatible driver from your system, try enabling the Core Isolation features again.
2] Device Manager
Windows has a Device Manager utility that lets you manage all your system drivers, like network drivers, display adapters, Bluetooth drivers, etc., in one place.
So use Device Manager to uninstall the incompatible drivers that suddenly disabled the Core isolation features on your PC. You can follow the below steps to do so:
- Press the Windows + R keys simultaneously to open the Run utility on your system.
- Type devmgmt.msc in the search box, and click OK to open the Device Manager utility.
- Click on View in the top ribbon menu, and select the Devices by Driver option from the menu.
- Once done, look for the incompatible driver in the present drivers and right-click on it.
- Select the Uninstall device option from the popup menu and click Uninstall in the prompt.
That’s it!
3] PowerShell or Windows Terminal
Last, you can uninstall incompatible drivers using the integrated command-line utilities, Windows PowerShell or Terminal.
So try the below-mentioned prompts to learn how to remove incompatible system drivers using any of these utilities on your PC:
- Hit the Windows key to open Windows Search Box and type Terminal or PowerShell.
- Click on Run as an administrator in the search results to open the utility with admin rights.
- Once done, copy-paste the below command in it to get a list of all third-party drivers:
Dism /online /Get-Drivers /Format:Table
- Execute the below command in the same console window to remove the selected driver:
pnputil /delete-driver <Published Name> /uninstall /force
Note: Replace “<Published Name>“ in the above command with the name of the driver you want to uninstall. You can look at the below command, for example:
pnputil /delete-driver davincipanel.inf /uninstall /force
The driver has now been deleted from the PC. Hopefully, the Core Isolation turned off due to the driver incompatibility issue must be resolved now.
Conclusion
Core Isolation is an integral security component of Windows OS. By default, it comes enabled. But at times, it gets disabled due to incompatible drivers. Luckily, it can be re-enabled by removing those drivers from the system.
You can delete them using the Autoruns utility, built-in Device Manager, and the PowerShell utility. In this tutorial, we explained how to use all three methods to uninstall all the incompatible drivers from your system.
Should Core Isolation Be On or Off Windows?
Core Isolation should generally be enabled on Windows for enhanced security. Core Isolation is a feature that isolates critical components of the operating system, such as memory, from potentially malicious or untrusted processes. By enabling Core Isolation, Windows creates a secure environment where sensitive system resources are protected from unauthorized access or exploitation. This helps safeguard against specific attacks, such as kernel-level exploits and memory-based vulnerabilities.
Does Windows Core Isolation Affect Performance?
In most cases, Windows Core Isolation has little impact on system performance. Due to the additional processing required by Core Isolation, it may introduce a slight overhead due to hardware virtualization. Virtualization can, however, be handled efficiently by today’s processors, so performance is minimized. Older or less powerful hardware may experience a more significant performance impact.
