I am experiencing a severe and persistent issue where the Extension Host crashes continuously immediately upon startup. The error message is: “Extension host terminated unexpectedly 3 times within the last 5 minutes.”
I have tried all standard and advanced troubleshooting steps to resolve this, but the bug persists:
Ran ‘Start Extension Bisect’: It instantly finished and disabled 0 extensions, proving it is not a third-party extension issue.
Cleared all caches: Deleted the %APPDATA%\Cursor and %USERPROFILE%\.cursor folders completely.
Isolated VS Code configs: Temporarily renamed my global and local .vscode folders to avoid any cross-platform conflicts.
Clean Install: Uninstalled and reinstalled the latest version of Cursor from scratch.
Isolated the environment: Tested with a completely empty workspace/window to rule out project-specific loops or large files.
Network & Security: Temporarily disabled my Antivirus/Firewall and VPN to rule out internal background process blocking.
WSL Environment: I read on the forums that installing the WSL extension might resolve this. I installed it and tested, but the issue remains identical.
Despite a 100% clean install with no extensions and an empty workspace, the extension host crashes immediately, completely breaking the core AI features. How can I provide more specific logs to help you patch this?
Steps to Reproduce
just start cursor and the bug will appears 1 minute after
Hey, thanks for the report. I can see you’ve already tried all the usual steps: clean install, clearing caches, bisect, and an empty workspace. Respect for such a detailed write-up.
I’ll need logs from Developer Tools to figure out what’s crashing the extension host:
Open Cursor
Immediately press Ctrl+Shift+I (or Help > Toggle Developer Tools)
Go to the Console tab
Wait until you see the error “Extension host terminated”
Copy all red errors from the Console and send them here
Another user on the same Windows build (10.0.26200) had a similar issue caused by Cannot find module cursor-socket. I want to check if it’s the same on your side.
A couple more things to try while we look into it:
Try:
cursor --disable-extensions
If it still crashes, start Cursor with a temporary profile from the command line:
cursor --profile-temp
This helps confirm whether the issue is related to your profile or state, or to the extension host process itself.
Here is the error while i tried to prompt and start cursor with '–disable-extension’ :
Request ID: 87eb61cb-a297-4c79-9e06-7aa779a11dc5 MainThreadCursor disposed while stream 6236cec8-ad29-471b-a1db-e3ca4bdd5110 was active ControlledExecDisposedError: MainThreadCursor disposed while stream 6236cec8-ad29-471b-a1db-e3ca4bdd5110 was active at Ocb.dispose (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:43782:29039) at U4a.disposeCustomers (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:46623:9828) at U4a.dispose (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:46623:9678) at yw_.dispose (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:49751:13932) at Aw_.stopAllInReverse (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:49751:13066) at async yid._doStopExtensionHosts (vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/lno%C3%AB/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js:49750:78673)
Can you run these two commands in Command Prompt and share the output?
dir "C:\Users\lnoë\AppData\Local\Programs\cursor\resources\app\extensions\cursor-socket\"
type "C:\Users\lnoë\AppData\Local\Programs\cursor\resources\app\extensions\cursor-socket\package.json"
This will show what’s actually in the folder and where package.json is trying to load the module from. That should help narrow it down to a packaging issue in the Windows installer.
Confirmed: the out/ folder is completely missing in cursor-socket. Your package.json has "main": "./out/main", but there’s no out/ folder, so the extension host crashes every time it starts.
I’ve reported this to the team, and your diagnostic info was exactly what we needed.
I’ll update the thread once there’s a fix. Sorry for the downtime.
