I find that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) sometimes fails to start after rebooting Windows 11. Once it is up and running it is fine.

Symptoms are that WSL fails to open and the wsl command hangs. VS Code, if set to open in WSL, fails to open the folder.

Rather than rebooting, you can also try the steps here. It is a matter of finding the process id for LxssManager:

tasklist /svc /fi “imagename eq svchost.exe”

then using End Process Tree in the Task Manager Details view for that process ID to terminate it. It will then restart automatically or you can use the wsl command as usual.