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Claude Code Issues / #77564

Desktop app startup spawns visible wsl.exe window ("Press any key to install WSL") on systems without WSL

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jul 14, 2026 by stoffg

Bug report — Claude Desktop (Windows)

Desktop app startup spawns visible wsl.exe --list window ("Press any key to install WSL") on systems without WSL

Environment

  • Claude Desktop (Windows, MSIX): 1.20186.9.0 (also observed on 1.20186.7)
  • Bundled Claude Code CLI: 2.1.209
  • OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
  • WSL: not installed (at time of bug)

Description

On every app start/restart (including after auto-update), the desktop app runs wsl.exe --list --verbose to enumerate WSL distros (the [wslDistros] check, logged in %APPDATA%\Claude\logs\ssh.log).

On a machine where WSL is not installed, Windows responds to this spawn by opening a visible interactive console window titled C:\WINDOWS\system32\wsl.exe that says:

Press any key to install Windows Subsystem for Linux. Press ESC or CTRL-C to cancel. This prompt will time out in 60 seconds.

This looks alarming to users (an unexpected system window offering to install an OS component they never asked for) and appears on every app launch.

Evidence

%APPDATA%\Claude\logs\ssh.log:

2026-07-14 08:26:10 [info] [wslDistros] wsl.exe --list exited 1   <- app cold start, window appeared
2026-07-14 13:47:46 [info] [wslDistros] wsl.exe --list exited 1   <- restart after auto-update, window appeared again

Both timestamps correspond exactly to the moments the WSL install prompt window appeared.

The spawning code is in app.asar (function logging as [wslDistros], calling wsl.exe with ["--list","--verbose"]).

Expected behavior

The WSL detection probe should be invisible to the user, e.g.:

  • spawn with windowsHide: true / CREATE_NO_WINDOW, and/or
  • check WSL presence first without triggering the inbox wsl.exe interactive installer (e.g. registry HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss, or wsl.exe --status behavior probing), and/or
  • suppress the interactive install prompt (the inbox stub shows it when the WSL Store package is absent).

Actual behavior

A visible wsl.exe console window with an interactive "install WSL" prompt opens on every app start on machines without WSL.

Workaround found

Installing the WSL platform (wsl --install --no-distribution) makes wsl.exe --list return plain text instead of the interactive installer, so the window no longer appears. But users shouldn't need to install WSL to silence this.

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