Ubuntu on WSL ERROR: UtilTranslatePathList:2671: Failed to translate

Whenever I launch Ubuntu on WSL, you may get the “UtilTranslatePathList:2671: Failed to translate” error. Here’s a sample error message:

<3>WSL (515) ERROR: UtilTranslatePathList:2671: Failed to translate D:\xpdf-tools-win-4.04\bin64

Despite this error, WSL may work fine. But the above error always appears when you start Ubuntu on WSL.

Cause

One or more obsolete entries in the Windows PATH environment variable causes this error. Deleting the bad entry/entries should resolve the issue.

Ubuntu on WSL tries to resolve each entry in the PATH environment variable and throws an error if there is an invalid entry.

Resolution

To resolve the UtilTranslatePathList error when starting Ubuntu on WSL, delete the invalid entries from the PATH environment variable.

• Open SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe
• Click Environment variables
• Double-click Path under “System variables”
• Delete the obsolete entries and click OK. In this example, the invalid entry is “D:\xpdf-tools-win-4.04\bin64“, as shown in the screenshot.
• Double-click Path under “User variables”
• Delete the obsolete entries and click OK.
• Click OK, OK.

Alternatively, you can resolve this by appending this section to wsl.conf:

[interop]
appendWindowsPath=false

appendWindowsPath

boolean

true

Setting this key will determine whether WSL will add Windows path elements to the $PATH environment variable.

For more information, check out the Microsoft Learn article Advanced settings configuration in WSL.