Installing wsl from the very zero base...

Question

While I was playing around with my wsl, I was curious what would happen if I actually run the command that deletes everything (rm -rf ~/*). Since I didn't use wsl for anything serious, I gave it a try. (Curiosity wins it all lol)

After then, every time I install a new distro of linux, those systems on wsl would always have no directory and configuration files which support linux commands. I wanted to reset it as default, so I deleted every single file that is associated with wsl in order to start over.

Starting from deleting any kinds of programs that runs on wsl, to Lxss keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER from the regedit. (Literally everything)

Now, I do not know how to install wsl since the command wsl --install does not work... It displays an error that says:

Catastrophic failure
Error code: Wsl/CallMsi/Install/E_UNEXPECTED

How am I supposed to set everything default from this zero base?

Answer 1

Hello 민영 김,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

Here are 2 steps can help to set WSL back to default.

1.Reset WSL Components:

•Shut down all running WSL instances and reset network components:

•wsl --shutdown

•netsh winsock reset

•netsh int ip reset

2.Uninstall and Reinstall WSL:

•Uninstall WSL and then reinstall it to ensure a clean setup:

•dism.exe /online /disable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /norestart

•dism.exe /online /disable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /norestart

•dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

Note: please back up all the data before you make any changes.

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,

Daisy Zhou

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