Solved “WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x80370114”

Error Screenshot

In this article, we will see how to solve the WslRegisterDistribution failure with error: 0x80370114 if you are also getting this error in your System. Sometimes when you are trying to install Linux on WSL then you might have observed this WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x80370114. This error usually occurs when the Hyper-V service is blocked during the Linux installation. Without the Hyper-V service up and running, Linux installation won’t start. There could be a few reasons for the Hyper-V service not running in your System. We will see all those reasons along with the steps to solve the error.

So in some cases when we try to install Ubuntu, we may end up getting WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0x80370114 error as you can see below

Error Prompt while installing Ubuntu on CMD

The above error could occur due to multiple reasons, one of the most frequent reasons is that Hyper-V is currently not enabled in your System. This means Hyper-V Host Compute Service, aka vmcompute.exe which is responsible for making the Hyper-V service up and running is currently not enabled. Along with this, Virtual Machine Worker Processaka vmwp.exe which is responsible for running the instances in Hyper-V hosts is also not enabled. So here we are going to enable both features using CLI mode and then we will verify the enabled feature in Program settings.

Step 1:- Enable-Feature

In the first step, you need to enable Microsoft Windows Subsystem the feature. To enable this feature, open the CLI terminal in administrator mode and run the command as shown below.

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

Next, you need to enable another feature called VirtualMachinePlatform using the below command.

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

Now, Restart your system, and once restarted, follow the below step.

Step 2:- Verify Exploit Protection Settings

First, Search for Turn Windows features on or off on Search Bar

Make sure Hyper V the feature is checked on Turn Windows features on or off as shown below:

Then you need to search Windows Security in the search bar as shown below. Once it shows up, tap on it to open.

→ You need to click on App & browser control Icon

→ Now click on Exploit protection settings under Exploit protection as highlighted below.

→ Make sure under System settings → Control Flow Guard (CFG) should be ‘ ON ’ by default.

.

→ Under Program settings, you need to make sure both vmcompute.exe and vmwp.exe are available with the Control Flow guard set to below:

If in case, You can't see these two programs then follow the below steps to add both programs:

a) Click on Add Program to customize→ Choose exact file path

b) Go to the path:- C:\Windows\System32→ Add both programs as shown below:

Both highlighted programs need to be added

In this step, for some users, this may not be available. In that case, go to the path C:\Windows\System32 and add all the programs starting with a prefix vm as shown below:

Add all highlighted programs

c) After adding each program, you will see the Program settings prompt. Make sure under CFG, all options are checked in as shown below:

d) Do these steps for all the programs.

After validating the programs under system settings and program settings, if you now try to start installing Ubuntu again, you will notice that it will start successfully as shown below.

If after following the above steps, you are still getting the same error then you need to check your default WSL version. You need to set your default WSL version to 2 and then restart the system one more time to see if it now fixed the issue.

→ Run

wsl --set-default-version 2

This is it! I hope this will help you to successfully install Ubuntu on your system using WSL. In case you are still stuck somewhere then please let me know your queries in the comment box !! Thank you…