Introduction⌗

When you use Windows 10/11 with the WSL service, you can encounter the following error

Error: 0x80040326
Error code: Wsl/Service/0x80040326

The terminal won’t open and you will keep staying in a loop when you close and open it.

How to fix it⌗

1. Open Windows Powershell in administrator mode⌗

This will allow you to run the following commands in elevated mode:

PS C:\Users\mossad> wsl -l
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-20.04 (Default)
docker-desktop
docker-desktop-data

PS C:\Users\mossad> wsl -d Ubuntu-20.04
Error: 0x80040326
Error code: Wsl/Service/0x80040326

The first command wsl -l will list the distributions of Linux that you have show the current default one with the issues.

The second command wsl -d Ubuntu-20.14 attempts to start the WSL service with that ditribution and has the same error we are solving.

2. Update WSL and shut it down completely⌗

You need to update your WSL service and you do that with wsl --update. Lastly, you shutdown the WSL service using wsl --shutdown.

PS C:\Users\mossad> wsl --update
Checking for updates.
Updating Windows Subsystem for Linux...

PS C:\Users\martinmusale> wsl --shutdown

3. Test that the error is fixed⌗

You can then run wsl -d Ubuntu-20.14 again to ascertain that the error has now been fixed. You should get no error in the output.

PS C:\Users\martinmusale> wsl -d Ubuntu-20.04

Now you can open up the WSL terminal and the error is gone.

Conclusion⌗

We have seen how you fix the wsl service error code Wsl/Service/0x80040326 by updating WSL and shutting it down.