Claude Desktop ‘Checksum Mismatch’ Error: The Complete Fix Guide (No Data Loss)

Claude Desktop “Checksum Mismatch” Error: What It Means and How to Fix It If you’ve launched the Claude desktop app and been greeted by a cryptic message like “Failed to start Claude’s workspace” followed by a long string of hexadecimal characters reading “Checksum mismatch for rootfs.img.zst,” take a breath. Your app isn’t broken, and your computer almost certainly isn’t either. This is a fairly common local cache or download verification issue, and in most cases it can be resolved in well under twenty minutes. This guide breaks down what the error actually means, why it happens, and walks through a …