VSCode stuck in "Opening remote" / "No WSL distros found" error

Question

It was working fine a couple of days ago, now it's stuck in "Opening remote".

An error is shown on a toast saying: "No WSL distros found. New distros can be installed from the Microsoft Store"

Current version is 1.104.0 (August 2025 release).

WSL installation seems to be fine:

>wsl --list --verbose
  NAME      STATE           VERSION
* Ubuntu    Running         2

Accessing its filesystem from Explorer also works.

Answer 1

I found this discussion and the solution offered there worked for me.
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/266335

Solution from there: Run wsl --update from Windows Powershell

Answer 2

Faced this issue after VSCode automatically updated to 1.104.0 (August 2025 release). In order to fix it, you'll have to disable automatic updates and rollback to 1.103.X (July 2025 release):

• First, click on the bottom-right corner where it says "Opening remote".

• In the menu that opens, click "Close Remote Connection".

• Click on the Manage icon (⚙️) and select "Settings". If you didn't close the remote connection, the Settings page will open but nothing will load, you won't won't be able to change them.

• Search for "Update Mode" and change it to "none" or "manual" .

• Navigate to https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_103 and download the right version for your system.

• Install it.

If someone arrives to this answer later than August 2025, chances are the latest update broke it. The steps to fix it (by rolling back) is mostly the same:

• Go to "Help" > "About".

• See your current version and if it was recently updated. If it was, chances are the latest update broke it.

• Follow the steps above and look for the version previous to the one you currently have.