Skip to content

WSL2 fails to launch Ubuntu and Debian #13663

Description

@Fareed19

Errors observed:

Catastrophic failure → Error code: Wsl/Service/E_UNEXPECTED

After repeated attempts: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateInstance/0x80072746

System Details
Windows build: Windows 11 Insider build 26200.6899 (fresh reinstall already performed)
WSL version: 2.6.1.0
Kernel version: 6.6.87.2-1
WSLg version: 1.0.66
MSRDC version: 1.2.6353
Direct3D version: 1.611.1-81528511
DXCore version: 10.0.26100.1-240331-1435.ge-release
Windows version: 10.0.26200.6899
Hardware: Gigabyte Master X motherboard, Intel i7 CPU, 64 GB RAM

WSL status:
Default Distribution: Ubuntu-24.04
Default Version: 2

Hyper-V: Enabled

Steps Already Taken

Unregistered the broken distro with wsl --unregister Ubuntu-24.04.

Reinstalled Ubuntu 24.04 → still fails with E_UNEXPECTED.

Tried Debian (wsl --install -d Debian) → same failure.

Reinstalled Windows 11 completely → issue persists.

Ran wsl --status → shows Ubuntu-24.04 as default, version 2.

Checked memory usage:
System has 64 GB RAM.
VmmemWSL uses only ~300 MB at crash time.
Confirms this is not an OOM (out of memory) issue.

Compared with GitHub issues:

#13263 (OOM crash) → ruled out.

downloaded and reinstalled wsl 2.6.1 and 2.6.2 from github→ issue persists

What It’s Not

Not a memory exhaustion issue (plenty of free RAM).

Not limited to Ubuntu (Debian also fails).

Not fixed by reinstalling Windows (problem persists after clean install).

Not a single corrupted distro (fresh installs also fail).

Not due to virtualization being disabled (Hyper-V is enabled).

Not 2.6.1 release problem. 2.6.2 release shows the same behaviors.

Observation: Ubuntu occasionally opens successfully, but after closing it, subsequent launches fail with Wsl/Service/E_UNEXPECTED. During the successful launches, Ubuntu behaves normally. But if I close that session, it won't start again, and multiple tries are needed.

Metadata

Metadata

Labels

No labels
No labels

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions