WSL manual installation The service has not been started

Question

I installed wsl manually following the official documentation, I also enabled "Windows subsystem for Linux" and restarted multiple times. But when I launch ubuntu I am getting the following error. My organization doesn't support the windows store.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

I found a solution within my company, where I did run into this problem as well. This similar answer did not work for me. My company does not allow Windows Store and we only have Windows 10 version which supports only WSL 1 not WSL 2. After off-line installation of the Ubuntu appx package I ran into this error.

A workaround which worked for me is the following:

• Download the Ubuntu 18.04 (Note 20.04 does not work properly with WSL 1 only WSL 2)
• Unzip the appx file (select directory carefully as it needs to stay there permanently ). Do NOT install.
• Run the ubuntu1804.exe file within the unzipped directory

For me this started the installation and ultimately led me to the point where it asks to set a user name and passwort.

After this initial set-up one can subsequently start bash by running this ubuntu1804.exe file.

As the root cause for "The service has not been started" message is still unknown to me, so this answer may or may not help others who get the same error message.