Windows 11 Settings App Crashes when selecting Location, Camera, or Microphone

Hello all,

I've been spending a considerable amount of time recently over in this thread fixing my WiFi connection time problem. It turns out that the problem was being caused by explosive growth of the file C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager\CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal due to a "bug" acknowledged by Microsoft. The bug has been reportedly fixed in June 2026 preview update, which I have installed. In particular, I'm running Windows 11 version 26200.8737

In the course of diagnosing the problem I was having, it was necessary for me to turn off location services, because doing so would stop the file from increasing in size and stabilize my WiFi connection time. When I tried to do that the easy way, using the settings app, when I navigated to Settings>Privacy&Security>Location, Camera, or Microphone, the settings app crashed. I had to resort to alternative ways to turn off location services, as documented here.

I've now spent several hours with ChatGPT trying to diagnose the crashing problem, and it has come to the conclusion that the crashing problem is related to the db-wal file size problem. In particular, the working hypothesis seems to be that, in the course of "fixing" that problem, either by deleting it, as described in the previous thread, or by installing the June preview update, the CAM database has become corrupted, and that corruption is causing the Settings app to crash for location, camera, or microphone. I'm advised to "rebuild" that database to see if it corrects the problem. That sounds like a lot of work.

Before I spend several more hours interacting with ChatGPT, I thought I'd drop by here and ask the experts for their recommendations. I can get along without the piece of the settings app that won't run on my laptop (it runs fine on my desktop running the same version of Windows), but it still bugs me and I'd like to fix it if it's not too much trouble. I'm also wondering if Microsoft's fix included rebuilding the database, in which case I'd be wasting my time doing that again. I also don't want to go through another Windows reset. I did that as part of the WiFi problem diagnosis not too long ago, and the Settings app crashes after doing that.

I look forward to any thoughts from the experts here. Thanks for any help.