All of my containers, users, my admin profile etc disappeared

Docker Desktop for Windows
1

This forum is not an official product support or issue reporting channel.
i’m new to all of this, so be nice.LL… with me please. i had my NextCloud all setup with myself as admin and 4 users. The process of linking them to my Raid 1 system in my D:drive was unavailable so I ChatGPT’d on how to rectify the problem. i was instructed on how to make sure ‘WSL’ and did that. Stil no process available. Next ChatGPY adv to switch from WSL to Hyper-V. I completed the process and when I restarted Docker Everything was gone. all containers, users my admin profile etc disappeared. Is there any way to retrieve this? Or do I need to reinstall everything? Thanks so much for your help
JimmyB

2

That’s to be expected, if the data is stored in a WSL2 backend, and you switched to use a WSL1 backed that uses Hyper-V.

If you are lucky, you old wsl2 docker-desktop and docker-desktop data distros are still there. Check wsl --list. If they are: switch back to the wsl2 backend.

3

Can you please tell me how to Check ws1 -list?
Thanks for the help.

4

Open a PowerShell terminal on your Windows host and execute this command: wsl --list.

5

did that and got error ‘ws1 is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet’

6

My mistake I typed in wsl --list and got Windows Subsystem for linux Distributions: docker-desktop (Default)

7

I missed a an argument. Try wsl --list --verbose please.

This time format the expected multiline output with ``` before and after that line, so it gets formatted as code.

8

Does this mean I’m redoing the whole process from scratch? That would suck

9

Tried that and got a resopnse that docker-desktop is running on version 2, which is likely the one I have up that’s blank

10

Is this what you meant?
‘’‘Name State Version’‘’
‘’‘DockerdesktopRunning 2’‘’

11

‘’‘Docker-desktop Running 2’‘’

12

My bad, I was ambiguous.
The three backticks need to a line before and a line after the text, so it becomes a text block.

It should look like this in the preview on the right:

this is text in a code block.
13

So

Docker-desktop Running 2
14

Anyway thanks so much for your help. it looks like I have a ton of work to do and better get at it. I’m just going to Riva Uninstall the whole deal so there isn’t any residual left over to toy with my settings. If you think of anything I need to do to alleviate my problem right from the initial installation please drop me a line.
I very much appreciate any help you can give.
BTW if the lines before and after the text are not right just let me know, but that is what I figured from your instruction. Sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Thanks, JimmyB

15

I wanted to understand whether the distributions docker-desktop and docker-desktop-data (still) exist, and which wsl version they use. I never used the WSL1 (hyper-v) backend, so there might be mechanics I am not aware of.

I expected to see an output like this:

PS C:\Users\me> wsl --list --verbose
  NAME                   STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu-22.04           Stopped         2
  docker-desktop-data    Stopped         2
  docker-desktop         Stopped         2

Note: Ubuntu-22.04 is an addition distro I installed.

In your case I expected it to show both distros with version 1 (=WSL1), but you seem to only have the docker-desktop distribution in version 2 (=WS2)

With WSL2, the data is persisted in the docker-desktop-data distribution. So either this distro is unregisted, or deleted. If it’s just unregistered, the virtual hard disk might still exist.

You could check if the virtual hard disk still exists:

  • open the file explorer
  • paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Docker\wsl\data into the path line
  • see if \the file ext4.vhdx exists in that folder.

If the file still exists you could try if switch back to the wsl2 backend re-registers and uses it.

I am not really an expert in this scenario, and my assumptions base on what I know about WSL2, so i might be wrong.

1 Like
16

Hi Meyay. I really appreciated your help. so thanks for that. I went back in and changed it back to WSL and nothing seemed to happen. Then as i was about to start everything over again our power went out for a few minutes. Frustrated, I walked away for a while. later I returned ready for war…booted computer tapped the Docker icon…everything was back to normal. This is crazy. I restarted it on several occasions to no avail. I guess sometimes we require a ‘hard boot’ to jolt things back to life. So thanks so much. Have a great day
JimmyB

1 Like