Terminal Process Terminating on folder switch / on its own

[bergjones]

Type: Bug

Behaviour

Upon switching project folders with "Open Recent" receive a similar message to

The terminal process "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe" terminated with exit code -1073741510.

upon switching folders, even with terminal unopened. If I change the default terminal to command prompt, or git bash, receive the same message but with the address for that specific terminal. The rest of my computer is fine, and it only happens with the Python extension enabled. I did a clean uninstall / reinstall VS Code and the issue persists.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Enable the addon
   2.Open a project with or without having the terminal open.
2. Switch to another project.
3. The message similar to
   The terminal process "C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe" terminated with exit code -1073741510.

pops up even without having the terminal open.

Diagnostic data

Output for Python in the Output panel (View→Output, change the drop-down the upper-right of the Output panel to Python)

XXX

Behaviour

XXX

Steps to reproduce:

1. XXX

Diagnostic data

Output for Python in the Output panel (View→Output, change the drop-down the upper-right of the Output panel to Python)

XXX

Extension version: 2025.2.0
VS Code version: Code 1.98.0 (6609ac3d66f4eade5cf376d1cb76f13985724bcb, 2025-03-04T21:06:18.612Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Modes:

• Python version (& distribution if applicable, e.g. Anaconda): 3.13.1
• Type of virtual environment used (e.g. conda, venv, virtualenv, etc.): System
• Value of the python.languageServer setting: Default

User Settings

languageServer: "Pylance"

Installed Extensions

Extension Name	Extension Id	Version
debugpy	ms-	2025.4.0
js-debug	ms-	1.97.1
js-debug-companion	ms-	1.1.3
python	ms-	2025.2.0
vscode-js-profile-table	ms-	1.0.10
vscode-pylance	ms-	2025.3.1

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K (24 x 3187)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	127.82GB (114.56GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id 7c9478a3-4795-4d48-8856-4fc79617c07c
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

A/B Experiments

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pythonrstrctxt:31112756
nativeloc1:31192215
iacca1:31171482
5fd0e150:31155592
dwcopilot:31170013
6074i472:31201624
dwoutputs:31242946
customenabled:31248079
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copilot_t_ci:31222730
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jda6j935:31233686

[anthonykim1]

Hello @bergjones Thanks for filing this issue.

Let us try two things:

First, what happens if you switch default shell from pwsh to gitbash?

Second, add

    "python.experiments.optOutFrom": ["pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation"]

into your setings.json and run command: Python: Clear Cahce and Reload
This command palette will be open if you ctrl + shift + p from your windows machine.

Let me know how these goes, thanks

[bergjones]

It still comes up after taking both steps but with a path to the git bash.

The terminal process "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe" terminated with exit code -1073741510.

If I disable the Python Extension and keep the C/C++ Extension active I don't have an issue. This only started happening very recently, like last couple of days. The funny thing is I personally never use the terminal in vs code to debug and I only noticed this because I have to switch folders to paste content from my private repo into my public repo and now the message appears. I have read someone say that I can simply disable the "Show Exit Alert" terminal setting in preferences, but that just hides the problem and doesn't solve it.

[anthonykim1]

Interesting, what if you downgrade your Python extension version to 2025.0 instead of 2025.2?
Make sure to restart extension and reload.

[bergjones]

It still has the issue with the 2025.0 version. I believe VS Code itself was updated to 1.98 on 3/4 or 3/5, just around when this started happening so I guess that since I am still using the latest version of VSCode which is 1.98, even with an older version of Python Extension, the issue can still be present.

[bergjones]

I just tested rolling back VS Code to 1.97 and following instructions to make it not auto-update itself to 1.98 before I had a chance to disable auto updates by first completely uninstalling VS Code 1.98 and removing associated leftover folders by deleting

%UserProfile%.vscode
%AppData%\Code

then downloading 1.97 from the changelog. Then I went to Windows Network Connection and temporarily disabling WiFi and then after 1.97 was installed setting

"update.mode": "none"

in user.json. Then re-enabling Wifi and downloading Python Extension (latest) and setting and opening the two project folders I switch between. I switched between them approximately 10 times to test. The popup did not show up.

On the other hand in 1.98 it shows up immediately after switching.