Bug report for WSL on win 11

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Connection to Cursor server failed: [wsl exec: installServerScript] Command failed with exit code 4294967295: stdout: Catastrophic failure Error code: Wsl/Service/E_UNEXPECTED

Steps to Reproduce

Using WSL connection on Windows 11 after the recent update.

Expected Behavior

Remote WSL asks to reinstall or reload, which doesn’t solve the issue unless I restart my device.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.64 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 25412918da7e74b2686b25d62da1f01cfcd27680
Date: 2025-11-06T04:35:14.424Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT arm64 10.0.26200

Additional Information

I have seen a similar bug report in August, but I couldn’t find a solution to resolve it.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

2

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known WSL system error. “Catastrophic failure” with code Wsl/Service/E_UNEXPECTED indicates an issue with WSL itself, not Cursor.

Solution - try these steps in order:

  1. Run: wsl --shutdown
  2. If that doesn’t help, reboot your computer
  3. Check for pending Windows updates (some users fixed it by installing OS updates)

Let me know if the issue persists after these steps!

3

this has been happening to me incessantly. what can we provide to help debug?

5

Could you run a htop within WSL to see if it is running out of CPU or memory? Usually when this happens the WSL environment is resource constrained.

6

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