An unexpected error was encountered while executing a WSL command (or how to install Docker on Windows)

Installing Dropbox Desktop on Windows

When trying to go through the Dropbox tutorial, I ran into an error after installing Dropbox Desktop: “An unexpected error was encountered while executing a WSL command”.

QUICKFIX TLDR:
Enable SVM (secure virtual machine) mode in your BIOS under Advanced CPU settings

Troubleshooting notes:

Dropbox Desktop would error out immediately upon loading. The troubleshooting instructions given did not work, as running:

"C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\resources\com.docker.diagnose.exe" gather -upload

resulted in “File not found error” repeatedly being displayed.

Reinstalling and rebooting didnt work either. So I looked into WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). When I tried to install in powershell (yuck) using wsl –install I got an error:

Error: 0x80370102 The virtual machine could not be started because a required 
feature is not installed.

So after looking at the WSL troubleshooting docs, I ran systeminfo.exe in powershell and scrolled to the bottom of the output to look at the Hyper-V section. SVM mode was disabled, so I went into BIOS, found SVM mode under the Advanced CPU settings and turned it on. After that wsl –install worked fine, and I was able to load Docker Desktop.