When customers attempt to install the WSL 2 Ubuntu distribution on Windows 11 VDIs, they encounter the following message:
Installing, this may take a few minutes.
Error observed WslRegisterDistribution failed with error: 0xe000020b Error: 0xe000020b (null)
Issue was found to be with VMware tools, After re-installing VMware tools able to run WSL 2 on MCS provisioned VDI
After reviewing WSL logs ( https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#8-detailed-logs ) we found that NIC creation was failing
NetMgmt::CreateVirtualSwitch,0,0,0,11,4,0,0,0x0000000000000000,0x00000E68,0x0000054C,3,,,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},,133295837751646337,0,0,"98AF13E8-C730-44F1-AB8C-6D4AE4F331BB","WSL","NetMgmtCreateVirtualSwitch call started" NetMgmt::CreateVirtualSwitch,0,0,0,11,2,0,0,0x0000000000000000,0x00000E68,0x0000054C,3,,,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},,133295837754467696,30,0,-536870389,"VmsIfSwitchResetExtensionMiniport call failed" NetMgmt::CreateVirtualSwitch,0,0,0,11,5,0,0,0x0000000000000000,0x00000E68,0x0000054C,6,,,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},,133295837755217187,45,0,2048,"98AF13E8-C730-44F1-AB8C-6D4AE4F331BB","WSL",UnknownHResultErrorcode:0xe000020b,"NetMgmtCreateVirtualSwitch call ended" ActivityError,0,0,0,11,2,0,0,0x0000000000000001,0x00000E68,0x0000054C,6,,,{35c8c604-8fd6-0007-2b23-c935d68fd901},,133295837755222013,45,0,16777216,3758096907,"onecore\vm\dv\net\hns\service\common\helperlib\src\switchhelper.cpp",61,"hostnetsvc.dll",0,"",1356,"\HnsRpcV2_Create\ResourceActivity",8,"HnsRpcV2_Create","",9,"ResourceActivity","",13,11,"" HNSResourceCreate,0,0,0,11,5,0,0,0x0000000000000000,0x00000E68,0x0000054C,6,,,{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},,133295837755223217,45,0,2048,1,"VirtualSwitch",{5dfd6d54-7241-4b18-b193-94552eb7f537},true,UnknownHResultErrorcode:0xe000020b