WSL2 distro failing to startup with code 4294967295

[bitcrazed]

• Your Windows build number: (Type ver at a Windows Command Prompt)
  19609

• What you're doing and what's happening: (Copy&paste the full set of specific command-line steps necessary to reproduce the behavior, and their output. Include screen shots if that helps demonstrate the problem.)
  Was browsing my Ubuntu WSL2 instance's filesystem using the new File Explorer WSL distro integration

• What's wrong / what should be happening instead:
  Suddenly, File Explorer could no longer connect to the distro.

Then tried connecting to distro via Windows Terminal, but got:

A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.
[process exited with code 4294967295]

Can no longer access my Ubuntu WSL distro at all.

• For WSL launch issues, please collect detailed logs.
  Logs attached.
  wsl2-start-issue.zip

[therealkenc]

#4364 #4929

[ghost]

I have the same issue with the file manager, but I can still access my distro. Same build also, I did submit this to feedback hub also.

[holazt]

Solve "process exited with code 4294967295" , run netsh winsock reset as Administrator, then reboot your computer.
The result like below:

❯ netsh winsock reset

Sucessfully reset the Winsock Catalog.
You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.

[kaevans]

Solve "process exited with code 4294967295" , run netsh winsock reset as Administrator, then reboot your computer.
The result like below:

❯ netsh winsock reset

Sucessfully reset the Winsock Catalog.
You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.

Does not resolve the issue.

[ghost]

Stopping Hyper-V service from Hyper-V manager app solved this issue.

[kaevans]

I had a customer's VPN client installed on my machine (Cisco AnyConnect VPN), the customer's installation package also installed dnscrypt. Uninstalling this has resolved the issue on my machine, confirming other threads that indicate the issue is usually related to network issues... particularly port 53.

[leizhilong]

Solve "process exited with code 4294967295" , run netsh winsock reset as Administrator, then reboot your computer.
The result like below:

❯ netsh winsock reset

Sucessfully reset the Winsock Catalog.
You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.

works for me, Thanks

[larson-carter]

I'm having this issue in a variety of situations.

1.) I'm just working and I close the terminal or ubuntu. Then I'm locked out of it
2.) I have my computer running for more than 36 hours then it does this? It could be coincidental however it is unlikely. Please not I'm not checking directly at 36 hours. It's just an estimate

Nothing fixes it. None of the above stuff mentioned has fixed it, neither have any other forum pages.

The only solution for me is to leave my PC running and every few hours to come back and check to see if it's fixed or still broken.

[forecho]

#4904 (comment)

[larson-carter]

@forecho That does not fix it.

[truealex81]

I just tried to open vhdx file in C:\Users\TrueAlex\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState
and my Ubuntu isn't working anymore :( even after reboot.

[KazeZlat]

WSL2 works fine on 19640, but fails with same code on 19645. I already had my WSL2 set up, but this update failed it. Checking for updates on 19645 resulted in nothing, even though release notes mentioned we should get kernel with Windows Update.

Had to roll back to 19640 for now.

[truealex81]

I'm solved this with:

DISM /online /disable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /norestart
DISM /online /disable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /norestart

Reboot, and then:

DISM /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /norestart
DISM /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /norestart

[pedrolamas]

I was seeing the same issue and managed to fix it (at least for now!)

I opened the Resource Monitor and checked the "Listening Ports" so I could see what processes were using port 53, and found dockerd.exe and svchost.exe.

As there are too many instances of svchost.exe I used the PID to find the process on Task Manager, right-clicked and selected "Go to Service" and found out that it was "SharedAccess" (ICS).

At this point I killed dockerd.exe and stopped SharedAccess service (that immediately started again) and that was enough for me to get WSL distro running again!

[gerardojbaez]

@pedrolamas, thanks for posting what worked for you! I don't have Docker for Windows installed (so no dockerd.exe), but managed to work around the "process exited with code 4294967295" by simply stopping SharedAccess as you mentioned.

I can't believe WSL team is taking so long with this issue, which clearly is happening to many users AND is preventing us from doing our work.

[simondebbarma]

@pedrolamas It worked for me too, I don't use Docker much so I removed it. I'll reinstall it and try again later tonight.

[mishrasatyam]

Solve "process exited with code 4294967295" , run netsh winsock reset as Administrator, then reboot your computer.
The result like below:

❯ netsh winsock reset

Sucessfully reset the Winsock Catalog.
You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.

This works for me

[skorov]

I get this error every time I reboot. @pedrolamas Do you if there's a more permanent workaround until the issue gets resolved? Thanks for the investigation btw!

[pedrolamas]

@skorov I'm afraid I don't have a more permanent solution for this, that will have to come from Microsoft themselves...

[elmorekevin]

+1 None of these solutions are working for me. My machine just updated overnight and I got the Access Denied message...

[ivesovanes]

netsh winsock reset

Sucessfully reset the Winsock Catalog.
You must restart the computer in order to complete the reset.

Did not work for me. My solution was:

Uninstall Docker Desktop
Restart machine
Install Docker Desktop

[raulftang]

same issue here.
None of these solutions are working for me. Please fix this soon. Thanks

[odoucet]

I made it work by following :
#5092 (comment)

then kill SharedAccess service.

And it wasn't enough, so I opened a powershell with Admin grants and typed :
wsl -l -v wsl bash wsl -l -v
then it worked.

[tomasaschan]

For me, killing SharedAccess service and restarting Docker did not help.

However, running wsl --terminate Ubuntu-20.04 fixed it instantly. I have no idea if any of the previous steps were prerequisites, but I believe not.

[emadhajjar]

None of these solutions are working for me.

I made it work by uninstalling "Windows Subsystem for Linux Update" and install it again.

[zhanglongqi]

I had a customer's VPN client installed on my machine (Cisco AnyConnect VPN), the customer's installation package also installed dnscrypt. Uninstalling this has resolved the issue on my machine, confirming other threads that indicate the issue is usually related to network issues... particularly port 53.

I stopped my OpenVPN client and wsl works. strange issue.

[totoalpina]

Error code: Wsl/Service/0x80040326
[ Process exited with code 4294967259 (0xffffffff)]

OS : Windows 11

I had the same issue with my wsl distro, and the work arround it was to update wsl.

in Powershell just put the following command:

wsl --update
wsl --shutdown

and after update and shutdown restart your distro.
Happy coding!!

[crusoexia]

Error code: Wsl/Service/0x80040326
[ Process exited with code 4294967259 (0xffffffff)]

OS : Windows 11

I had the same issue with my wsl distro, and the work arround it was to update wsl.

in Powershell just put the following command:

wsl --update
wsl --shutdown

and after update and shutdown restart your distro. Happy coding!!

This works for me. I met this issue after uninstall Docker Desktop.

[ebdonato-dock]

wsl --update

This works for me on Windows 10. I met this issue at morning when I have started to work (after started my PC)

[martinezj1]

as noted above - I had to update and shutdown WSL, but it didn't fully get repaired until I restarted my PC. It's back to working now.

[AxxiD]

in Powershell just put the following command:

wsl --update
wsl --shutdown

and after update and shutdown restart your distro.

Also had this issue on Windows 10 today. After executing those two commands it worked again.

Feels like it's some kind of incompatablilty with the previous windows kernel version.

[bartosz-bear]

I went to Task Manager on Windows 10 and shut down old WSL2 session which was still running. Simply killing the background process fixed the isssue for me.

Unfortunately it's a one-off solution. For some reason WSL2 doesn't terminate properly even with a command like wsl --shutdown, so you have to clean the Task Manager every time you want to start WSL.

[aaronweixiangli]

wsl --update
wsl --shutdown

This works for me. Note: I also have to go to Terminal -- Select Setting -- Select Ubuntu -- Select Starting directory -- Change the directory to ~ ( This will start your ubuntu in \wsl\Ubuntu\home<yourUserName> )

[roman-89]

In my cased it worked after I closed many other applications.

Somehow when I have too many RAM and CPU hungry applications running the WSL fails to start, after running "netsh winsock reset" and closing some of them the WSL started again.

[ultrablue]

I was getting following errors [process exited with code 4294967295 (0xffffffff)] [process exited with code 1 (0x00000001)]

I ran wsl --showdown then wsl and its working.

This is working for me, as well.
There's a typo, though; showdown should be shutdown:

Open a PowerShell
run the following commands:
wsl --shutdown
wsl

[AleksandrHovhannisyan]

I frequently encounter this error on WSL2 and none of the solutions here work reliably. I'll do a wsl --shutdown but it won't resolve the issue, then I'll try manually launching the distro with wsl -d <Distro> and that'll give me the connection error, and then I'll open Windows Terminal one last time to launch it and it'll magically boot up like nothing ever happened 😒

[pedromundo]

I have this same issue on Windows 10. In my case, it seems to have some correlation with keeping a RDP session alive and dis/reconnecting with some time in-between. Hard to figure out anything more than that.

The one that consistently fixes it for me is the following in an admin powershell:
Get-Service vmcompute | Restart-Service

In my case, wsl --shutdown seems to do nothing, and netsh winsock reset always works, but requires a restart which is not always to my advantage.

PS: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.2006]

[ArturKT]

wsl --update failed for me with error:
Checking for updates. Error: 0x8024500c Error code: Wsl/UpdatePackage/0x8024500c
That's probably because MS Store is disabled on the PC.
So I run: wsl --update --web-download
That solved the issue.

[mkubdev]

Same as @ArturKT.

Additionally,
I solved the issue by upgrading WSL through Microsoft Windows Store desktop application > Library > Update all

That worked instantly without need to reboot.

wsl --version

Version WSL : 1.2.5.0
Version du noyau : 5.15.90.1
Version WSLg : 1.0.51
Version MSRDC : 1.2.3770
Version direct3D : 1.608.2-61064218
Version de DXCore : 10.0.25131.1002-220531-1700.rs-onecore-base2-hyp
Version de Windows : 10.0.19045.3086

[BoBBer446]

Yesterday wsl worked.
I updated WSL about Windows Store.

PS C:\Users\User> wsl --version
WSL-Version: 1.2.5.0
Kernelversion: 5.15.90.1
WSLg-Version: 1.0.51
MSRDC-Version: 1.2.3770
Direct3D-Version: 1.608.2-61064218
DXCore-Version: 10.0.25131.1002-220531-1700.rs-onecore-base2-hyp
Windows-Version: 10.0.22621.2428

Now i get the same issue:

Die Anforderung wird nicht unterstützt.
Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateInstance/CreateVm/0x80070032

[Verarbeitung des Prozesses mit Code 4294967295 (0xffffffff) beendet]
Sie können dieses Terminal jetzt mit STRG+D schließen oder zum Neustart die EINGABETASTE drücken.
Die Anforderung wird nicht unterstützt.
Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateInstance/CreateVm/0x80070032

[Verarbeitung des Prozesses mit Code 4294967295 (0xffffffff) beendet]
Sie können dieses Terminal jetzt mit STRG+D schließen oder zum Neustart die EINGABETASTE drücken.

PS C:\Users\User> wsl -l -v
  NAME      STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu    Stopped         2
PS C:\Users\User>

I Tryed all of this issue, nothing worked.

[ArturKrys]

I encountered a problem that initially manifested as slow loading times for the file explorer (memory for sure isn't the problem and i don't think ram either). Although I could access most files, those within the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) didn't load. For example, when attempting to open the "AmbienteDeTrabalhoUbuntu" folder in Ubuntu, I received the following error message:

the translation of the error is
\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\artur\AmbienteDeTrabalhoUbuntu is not accessible. You may not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server
to see if you have access permissions.
Attempt to access an invalid address.

Later, while engaged in other computer activities, I received a notification from WSL

indicating a detected change in the HTTP proxy on the host. The notification advised restarting WSL to apply the changes. Consequently, when I attempted to open Ubuntu, the terminal launched but failed to load. So i tried executing "wsl --shutdown" in the command prompt resulting in an indefinite loading process.
Later i dicovered if i wait long enough on the terminal of ubuntu it appears this impossible to find the name of the network.
Error code: Wsl/0x80070043 [process ended with the code 4294967295 (0xffffffff)]
th translation is it appears this impossible to find the name of the network. Now you can close the terminal with Ctrl+D or Enter to restart. If i click Enter after some time it says the same thing

EDIT: run netsh winsock reset as Administrator, then reboot your computer. did solve the problem
EDIT2: it isn't a permanent fix after a while i got the same problems and had to to repeat the steps. Still didn't find a way to fix this forever

[caminashell]

For me, the cause was Comodo Auto-Containment.

To explain . . .

I went through a process of deduction to find out what the cause was for my terminal not running as expected. I tried to stop/start the virtualization platform - negative. Tried netsh winsock reset - negative. I even went as far as checking my UEFI SVM setting, which was fine.

Then I thought back to what I had changed since I last ran the container. The only things I could think of were Malwarebytes, and Comodo Firewall (which comes with some fancy features).

I quit Malwarebytes - negative. I turned off all Comodo features - SUCCESS! Then narrowed it down to Auto-containment, so whilst it was off, I added the terminal process to an ignore rule, and now all is fine.

[bastianhilton]

not sure if it is a permanent fix for myself but I went into task manager then services and restarted the wsl service and now I can access my distro through the terminal

[Culdz]

Hello guys,

Tried most of the solution above, none worked for me.

What worked for me (keep in mind that I executed most if not all the solution above, might had an effect but didn't work until the following solution) :

1 . Go in the "Enable or disable windows feature" panel

• Uncheck Hyper-v
• Uncheck Windows plateform Hypervisor (translated from french)
• Uncheck Virtual machine plateform (translated from french)

2. Restart
3. Repeat step one but this time Enable them all.
4. Restart

wsl worked again.

Goddamn, I was on the verge of swapping computers.
Good luck bois

[AsparagusEduardo]

not sure if it is a permanent fix for myself but I went into task manager then services and restarted the wsl service and now I can access my distro through the terminal

@bastianhilton
What's the name of it? I can't find it.

[zenitogr]

SharedAccess
in french
Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) | SharedAccess | Partage de connexion Internet (ICS)

[Geobert]

I encountered that, and notice it happens when I have NordVPN up. Pausing the VPN allow me to launch WSL

[m3e-g]

I had the same problem when I tried to boot wsl2 distro when connected via the FortiClient VPN. Disconnecting before starting allowed me to boot.

[EduardoGurgel]

Run powershell with Admin
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
Restart your PC

It worked here!

[gustavosimon]

I'm solved this with:

DISM /online /disable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /norestart
DISM /online /disable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /norestart
Reboot, and then:

DISM /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /norestart
DISM /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /norestart

It worked for me!

[Try2079]

Win10 Enterprise Edition 22H2

Open Hyper-V Manager if you have, then run wsl.

Work for me.