Bash on Ubuntu on Windows not starting

Question

So, I've been using the new(ish) Bash on Ubuntu on Windows (WSL) for a while now and all has been top-notch, until yesterday.

I git-pushed from Bash by accident, so it asked me for my repo-destination account details like normal. I decided to ignore this, terminate Bash and try to just use powershell instead (can't ever remember passwords!). Terminating Bash however caused the shell to freeze. I forced closed and restarted my comp (I've had to force close and restart several times before for various reasons and everything was fine).

After boot up, I just tried to check if Bash was working again, but it wasn't. It just failed to start with no error message. For example:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> bash
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>

Has anyone else had a similar situation/knows how to help?

EDIT: Only solved through reinstalling bash, using

    lxrun /uninstall /full

then

    lxrun /install 

Answer 1

I had the same issue but my solution was different. I found that my (Default) WSL distribution was set to docker-desktop-data instead of my Ubuntu distribution, e.g.

In PowerShell (Windows Shell): wslconfig /L

This lists WSL distributions. For me "docker-desktop-data (Default)" was listed as default not my Ubuntu distribution.

To change this:

In PowerShell (Windows Shell): wslconfig /setdefault Ubuntu-20.04

Answer 2

Came here with a similar issue, but a different solution, so I'll post in case it helps anyone else.

The difference in my situation was that, when running bash through Command Prompt, it complained about Legacy Mode being enabled.

1. Open a regular command prompt (win+r then cmd)
2. Right-click the title bar and select Properties
3. Deselect "Use legacy console (requires restart)"

Now it should work either by launching the standalone app, or typing bash into a regular cmd window after restarting Command Prompt.

This and other causes can be found in this Github issue.

Answer 3

The solutions listed also did not work for me. I found a solution here.

Essentially, navigate to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Settings > Advanced > Virtual memory, Change ..., and set a Custom size for the paging file size: 800 min and 1024 max. Restarted, and the command prompt came back.