These group policies prevent WSL installation for some reason

[lyndsay9968]

Windows Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.5131]

WSL Version

0.0.0.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.10.102.1

Distro Version

Ubuntu

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

1. Create a fresh Windows 10 installation (beware of nested virtualization if you want to test WSL in VM)
2. Disable these group policies

• Allow publishing of User Activities
• Allow upload of User Activities
• Configure Windows Defender SmartScreen (all of them)

3. Run wsl --install

Expected Behavior

WSL is installed

Actual Behavior

Installing, this may take a few minutes...
WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x800701bc

wsl --update
Checking for updates...
Downloading updates...
Installing updates...
This change will take effect on the next full restart of WSL. To force a restart, please run 'wsl --shutdown'.
Kernel version: 5.10.102.1

wsl --shutdown
wsl --install -d Ubuntu
Installing, this may take a few minutes...
WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x800701bc

Disabling each of these policies individually does not cause installation problems. I tried disabling them in pairs (I didn't check all combinations) and they also don't caused installation problems. Only blocking all 6 (Configure Windows Defender SmartScreen occurs 4 times) leads to this problem.

Diagnostic Logs

No response

[github-actions]

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Otherwise please attach logs by following the instructions below, your issue will not be reviewed unless they are added. These logs will help us understand what is going on in your machine.

How to collect WSL logs

Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

The script will output the path of the log file once done.

If this is a networking issue, please use collect-networking-logs.ps1, following the instructions here

Once completed please upload the output files to this Github issue.

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View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Closed similar issues:

• WSL installation fails with error "0x8007019e" plus "wsl -l -v" gives an error "Wsl/0x80080005" (#12071), similarity score: 0.74
• Error 0x80370102 after wsl --install and reboot (#7902), similarity score: 0.74
• Can't install any distribution on WSL2 on Windows 11 Pro (#11617), similarity score: 0.73
• WslRegisterDistribution failed with 0x80070422 (#3815), similarity score: 0.73
• Cannot install distributions for WSL2 (Error 0x80040154) (#10019), similarity score: 0.73

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[lyndsay9968]

I am attaching the logs, but you would do better to recreate the situation yourself. We are talking about a clean system immediately after installation after all.

WslLogs-2024-11-20_15-34-55.zip

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

Appx package is not installed

[sirredbeard]

beware of nested virtualization if you want to test WSL in VM

To confirm, you have nested virtualization enabled on the VM?

You see virtualization listed on the CPU panel of Task Manager?

[lyndsay9968]

Of course I had. That's why I wrote a warning, in case you want to test it like I did in a virtual machine. But that's not its problem. I only used the VM to narrow down the problematic policies. The problem relates to installation on bare metal.

After installing WSL, all virtual machines in VirtualBox and VMware Workstation were running unbearably slow. It took twenty minutes to load the system, not to mention trying to start anything. I had to test it under these conditions to point out to you what was causing the error.

Additionally, even after uninstalling WSL and disabling it in the system functions (hyper-v was already disabled) and rebooting the system, the VMs continued to run horribly slow. Regardless of what I tried nothing helped. I was forced to reinstall the entire system and spend hours installing updates and many times rebooting the system to get it to update. And re-set everything. What a mess.