11

In past versions of Windows 10, WSL could be exited by closing all active terminals but with the introduction of background tasks in WSL this no longer works. Is there a way to exit WSL without rebooting the host system?

laverya
  • 697

4 Answers4

16

Yes, it is.

As an Administrator restart the windows Service "LxssManager" on Windows 10. This does a clean boot of the WSL. The services in the Linux Subsystem - for example xrdp - must be restarted if not enabled for autostart.

det13eg
  • 176
14

A Powershell solution

Get-Service LxssManager | Restart-Service
Frank Fu
  • 241
12
  1. WIN+R -> services.msc

  2. Find LxssManager

    enter image description here

  3. Right-click -> Restart

    enter image description here

Sam Denty
  • 7,426
6

As the other answers mention, specifically for windows 1803, the following should work from powershell or cmd:

net stop LxssManager

As highlighted by @Ramhound, only for newer versions, which have wsl 2, you can also run this from powershell or cmd:

shutdown all instances:

wsl.exe --shutdown

shutdown a specific instance (e.g. Ubuntu):

wsl.exe -t Ubuntu

to show the current list of instances:

wsl.exe -l
Leo
  • 809