Windows 10 update reportedly kills Linux support

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Windows 10 has run into trouble with its latest cumulative update for the May 2020 Update, it probably won’t surprise you to learn, and this time the apparent casualty is Linux support.

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) has been broken by update KB4571756 (September’s round of monthly OS patching by Microsoft), according to reports, an update which delivers the fix for a thorny and problematic SSD issue that’s been plaguing Windows 10 users for some time now.

As seems to be the case all too often these days, however, the update gives a fix with one hand, and removes something with the other – at least for some users – and in this case, some of those trying to fire up WSL2 are getting an ‘element not found’ error.

Windows Latest observes that there are reports of this problem on the Feedback Hub and Microsoft’s Github bug report forum, but it’s not clear exactly how widespread the alleged issue may be.

No acknowledgement

Certainly, Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged the bug – at least not yet – so it may be affecting only a small number of users (reports online aren’t majorly widespread either). The only documented issue with KB4571756 at the time of writing pertains to buggy behavior with the Microsoft Input Method Editor (for Japanese or Chinese languages).

Sadly, the only solution to this problem at the moment – and it’s not really a workaround as such – is to uninstall KB4571756, meaning you’ll have to live without the various fixes (including the resolution to that nasty SSD bug).

As we’ve previously reported, that SSD issue is with Windows 10’s Drive Optimize feature errantly defragging the system drive after every time that the PC is rebooted, which isn’t good news for the wear and tear and longevity of your solid-state drive.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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