This issue can apply to any number of computers, but in my case, it was an issue on my new Microsoft Surface Laptop 3. Even out of the box, I was unable to enable the Memory Integrity for Core Isolation. In the screenshot above, you can see that it is because of an incompatible driver. In recent updates of Windows 10, you can click on the blue link to view the list of incompatible drivers. In most cases, the incompatible driver will be wdcsam64_prewin8.sys which is a Western Digital driver that is included in Windows 10. If you click on the link and it lists wdcsam64_prewin8.sys, then follow these steps to remove this driver if it is not needed on your system. Note: It is not needed on the Surface Laptop 3.
Fix to Enable Memory Integrity Core Isolation in Windows 10 due to Incompatible Driver
- Open an elevated command prompt (Run as Administrator)
- Enumerate the 3rd party drivers with the following command:
pnputil /enum-drivers
- Find the driver with the Original Name of wdcsam.inf (if the incompatible driver was wdcsam64_prewin8.sys) and note the Published Name for the driver, which is oem##.inf
- Run the command to uninstall the driver:
pnputil /delete-driver oem##.inf
- Back at the Memory Integrity setting, click Scan Again and it should allow you to enable Memory Integrity
- After enabling Memory Integrity, you’ll need to restart your computer
Read at least 3 other articles and several videos on how to fix the issue and none worked. None of them worked. Some told me I needed to “own” the driver before Windows would allow me to delete it. Your method was easy, simple and clean and worked like a charm. I also had usb2ser.sys (a trojan horse also load as the same date as Western tech one and I got rid of them both. Both were keeping my memory integrity from being enabled. Thank YOU!!
Can you tell me how you got rid of usb2ser.sys. I have the same issue but nothing works. The drive doesn’t show up with the above mentioned command
amazing.. Mine was:
published name: oem11.inf
original name: wcdsam.inf
provider name: western digital technologies
class name: WD drive management devices
class guid {8496e87e-c0a1-4102-9d8d-bd9a9b8b07a9}
driver version: 11/30/2017 1.2.0.0
signer name: microsoft windows hardware compatibility publisher
on the security , it was called WD SES device
i dont even know where this came from. im going to assume it was from an driver update from windows update.
got it removed with some driver removing program i had installed previous and oit works!
Thank you for the steps. I couldn’t delete mine as it says access denied for one and “failed to delete driver package:one or more devices are presently installed using the specified INF: ( i have 2 oem drivers in pnputil). How to get this solved? Thx in advance
Thanks very much, worked perfectly! Dell Inspiron 3793
This is great info. I have a question though. How can I tell if the driver is actually needed or not? I don’t believe it is, but I don’t want to break my PC doing this. Is there a way to do a reverse lookup to find a device using this driver? Secondly, is there a performance cost or any other downside to using core isolation? I doubt it, but thought I would ask…