stealth-extract fails on Windows 10: SessionDriverKernelStartFailedError (v1.0.0)
Author: iloveyou1955Created Jul 1, 2026Updated Aug 26, 2026
Environment
- OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
- Installation:
uv tool install browser-act-cli --python 3.12 - Version: browser-act-cli v1.0.0
- Python: Python 3.14.3
Bug Description
Running any browser-act stealth-extract command on Windows 10 fails immediately with:
Error 230404: Browser launch failed: Failed to obtain machine code for windows
(raw: SessionDriverKernelStartFailedError)
Steps to Reproduce
browser-act stealth-extract https://httpbin.org/headers
Observed Behavior
The command exits with error code 230404. The error message indicates the stealth browser's anti-detection kernel driver cannot start on this Windows system. This completely blocks stealth-extract — the core feature for lightweight anti-bot content extraction without creating a browser session.
Expected Behavior
stealth-extract should work on Windows 10, or at minimum:
- Fall back to a non-kernel-driver approach when the driver is unavailable
- Provide clear documentation about Windows driver prerequisites (driver signing, required Windows features, etc.)
- Give a more actionable error message suggesting how to resolve the issue
Impact
Without stealth-extract working on Windows, the only remaining content extraction paths require creating a browser session (chrome/chrome-direct/stealth) with Confirmation Gate, which is much heavier than a simple fetch. This significantly reduces the tool's value for Windows users.
Additional Context
- Clean Windows 10 install, no special security software
- Fresh
uv tool install browser-act-cli --python 3.12 - Other commands (
get-skills,--help,--version) work fine - Chrome browser itself runs normally on this system
Source: browser-act/skills