Docker desktop needing WSL update when it's already up to date

Docker Desktop
1

On a fresh install of Windows 10 IoT LTSC and Docker desktop I get the following message
“WSL needs updating” even though WSL has been selected to run in version 2 and has been installed both manually and tried to update even though it has been already on the latest version.

Tried installing ubuntu WSL which gave me a virtualization error that was fixed by a BIOS setup change however the same message appears upon reinstall/reboot and closing all other docker instances before running desktop app.
Please let me know what else I should do in order to share logs or what other steps should be required on my end, thanks.

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2

Hi @wanderingraven, could you share the output from wsl --list --v & wsl --version? Also, recommending you to submit the issue via GitHub · Where software is built since the developers would be able to help further with looking into your Diagnostics ID:
Troubleshoot and diagnose | Docker Docs

Hope this helps!

3

With Docker Desktop 4.49.0 the support for Windows 10 and Windows 11 22H2 and older are dropped.
You might want to start looking for another solution.

4

yes you are right, I’ll still try for a while longer otherwise I’ll have to switch to Ubuntu/Nix OS and run natively, thank you for the clarification

5

Uploaded github ticket #14963, strangely enough there’s no WSL instance for docker when there should be two, only one for Ubuntu is present which I installed for debugging virtualization.
can’t run troubleshoot exe nor “get support” from docker instance so it’s difficult to know what’s causing this
still was able to get the diagnose code 91BCC5D5-F12D-4241-B255-DC7A9727CCEC/20251024011102

6

Please share the details @tazkysfin asked about. They help us to understand if “it’s already up to date” is really the case. Being able to use distributions with version 2, doesn’t necessarily mean the WSL installation is up-to-date.

Note: The in-box version installed through activating the wsl feature is not up-to-date. You need to install the app version from the Microsoft Store, or download the release from the GithHub repo - the current version is 2.6.1: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/releases/tag/2.6.1

7

Thank you meyay that was the file I needed in order to get DD to work, I forgot to copy the output in here as I did in the github ticket, I’ll close both but will still put the log of both commands in case someone sees the same behavior.

PS C:\Users\mayos> wsl --list --v
NAME STATE VERSION

    Ubuntu-24.04 Stopped 2
    PS C:\Users\mayos> wsl --version
    Invalid command line option: --version
8

This confirms it: your wsl version was not up-to-date. In fact it appears to be the in-box version installed through activating the wsl features, which is so old that it doesn’t even know the --version argument.

Please download the wsl release version I shared in my previous post and install it. Make sure to download the package for your cpu architecture, which usually is x64.