Cannot uninstall WSL any more

[tasty0tomato]

Windows Version

10.0.19045.4529

WSL Version

2.2.4.0

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

No response

Distro Version

No response

Other Software

No response

Repro Steps

I have disabled the Windows Subsystem for Linux in Turn Windows features on or off.

Expected Behavior

It should be deleted

Actual Behavior

But WSL is not uninstalled, and I can still find it in C:\Windows\System32

Diagnostic Logs

No response

[github-actions]

Logs are required for review from WSL team

If this a feature request, please reply with '/feature'. If this is a question, reply with '/question'.
Otherwise please attach logs by following the instructions below, your issue will not be reviewed unless they are added. These logs will help us understand what is going on in your machine.

How to collect WSL logs

Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

The scipt will output the path of the log file once done.

Once completed please upload the output files to this Github issue.

Click here for more info on logging
If you choose to email these logs instead of attaching to the bug, please send them to [email protected] with the number of the github issue in the subject, and in the message a link to your comment in the github issue and reply with '/emailed-logs'.

View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Closed similar issues:

• WSL uninstall error (#7256), similarity score: 0.74
• Can't uninstall or reinstall ubuntu. (#7808), similarity score: 0.73
• Can't uninstall WSL (#5860), similarity score: 0.72
• Uninstalling WSL2 does not remove ext4.vhdx (#9683), similarity score: 0.72
• WSL doesn't appear on Windows features (#10554), similarity score: 0.70

Note: You can give me feedback by thumbs upping or thumbs downing this comment.

[tasty0tomato]

/question

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

Found '/question', adding tag 'question'

[dcasota]

@tasty0tomato see #11675 (comment). It may be an issue with KB5039212. Try to uninstall it wusa /uninstall /kb:5039212. The files still will be present in c:\windows\system32, but wsl -v shows up the old version, and it should be possible to reinstall wsl.

[benhillis]

We added 'wsl.exe --uninstall` to uninstall the store version of WSL.

[dcasota]

@benhillis fyiwsl —uninstall does not work in some constellations as expected. One constellation is wsl version 2.1.5/2.2.4 with kb5039212. After wsl deinstallation the files still exist in system32 directory.