Core Isolation turned off due to WDCSAM64_PREWIN8.SYS incompatibility

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

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

6. 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.

Answer 2

First keep in mind that I learned this myself so everyone's situation might be different. I actually just had this problem with a few drivers I had to end up removing.

First, you want to use Autoruns, This will give you the drivers and their locations, you can save it or just hit run for it to open up.

Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

• Once you open at the very top just hit the magnifying glass and search for your driver and choose it.
• At the bottom, you should see your driver, version, and file location.
• You can either use this youtube video to delete the needed files or go to the file location and delete them. I had an issue with one of them I had to manually find the file location and delete it from there and reboot. But now I can turn this on.

(1) [SOLVED] Unable Turn On Memory Integrity | Review Incompatible Drivers | Core Isolation Issue - YouTube

Answer 3

I contacted Microsoft tech support. They were able to fix the problem by deleting oem33 driver.

Answer 4

What are the steps for this?

Answer 5

I have same exact issue on MI laptop