Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateVm/ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND

[MatousKundrik]

Windows Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.3031]

WSL Version

1.2.5.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.15.90.1

Distro Version

No response

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

Unable to install WSL 2 distros. Can successfully install and access WSL 1 distro but attempting to update from 1 to 2 results in the following:

PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl -l -v
  NAME      STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu    Running         1
PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2
For information on key differences with WSL 2 please visit https://aka.ms/wsl2
Conversion in progress, this may take a few minutes.
The system cannot find the path specified.
Error code: Wsl/Service/CreateVm/ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND

Attempting to install a WSL 2 distro directly results in the following:

PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl --set-default-version 2
For information on key differences with WSL 2 please visit https://aka.ms/wsl2
The operation completed successfully.
PS C:\Windows\system32> wsl --install -d ubuntu
Ubuntu is already installed.
Launching Ubuntu...
Installing, this may take a few minutes...
WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x80070003
Error: 0x80070003 The system cannot find the path specified.

Press any key to continue...

I have tried installing various distributions both from the command line and from the Microsoft Store, all of which result in the same issue. Most relevant support I have found suggests ensuring Intel VT-x is enabled in BIOS (which I have verified to be the case) as well as enabling the correct Windows features, which I also believe I have done correctly.

The closest existing issue (#9349) I was able to find suggests clearing out missing values from Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss but that dosen't appear to be the problem in my case.

This issue (#6363) also appears similar, unfortunately I have no .wslconfig present and making the suggested changes to the registry yielded no results.

Expected Behavior

See Above

Actual Behavior

See Above

Diagnostic Logs

No response

[MatousKundrik]

WslLogs-2023-06-07_17-57-29.zip

I have attached WSL logs while attempting to install a distro above, as suggested here: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#8-collect-wsl-logs

[OneBlue]

Thank you for reporting this @MatousKundrik. Looking at the logs it looks like Hyper-V is in a bad state, which causes the VM to fail to start.

Can you try to disable both Virtual machine platform and all hyper-v components, then reboot, re-enable them and reboot again ?

I'd be curious to see if that will solve the issue.

[MatousKundrik]

Thank you for reporting this @MatousKundrik. Looking at the logs it looks like Hyper-V is in a bad state, which causes the VM to fail to start.

Can you try to disable both Virtual machine platform and all hyper-v components, then reboot, re-enable them and reboot again ?

I'd be curious to see if that will solve the issue.

Thanks for the feedback, seems you're exactly right! WSL + Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS is now working as expected! 😁

For anyone else having the same issue, the exact steps I followed were:

• Toggle Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Platform off in Windows Features
• Restart PC allowing updates to be applied
• Toggle Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Platform on in Windows Features
• Restart PC allowing updates to be applied
• Reinstall WSL Distribution

WslLogs-2023-06-08_01-30-00.zip
WSL logs are again attached above in case they prove useful.

I was at my wits end and about to do an in-place reinstall of Windows, glad this worked!

[fgbyte]

@MatousKundrik thank you very much, you save my day