winget upgrade Microsoft.WSL fails with error 0x80073d28 instead of triggering UAC prompt

[hossamdash]

Windows Version

10.0.26100.8875

WSL Version

2.7.11.0 upgrading to 2.7.13

Are you using WSL 1 or WSL 2?

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

6.18.33.2-2

Distro Version

N/A (Package upgrade issue via WinGet)

Other Software

Windows Package Manager (winget)

Repro Steps

1. Open a standard (non-elevated/unprivileged) PowerShell terminal.
2. Run winget upgrade Microsoft.WSL.
3. Observe the installer start progress.

Expected Behavior

winget prompts a User Account Control (UAC) elevation request to allow administrator privileges for the installation to proceed, matching previous versions and standard system app upgrade behavior.

Actual Behavior

The installer fails immediately at 1% progress without triggering a UAC prompt, outputting the following error:
Installer failed with exit code: 0x80073d28 : The package installation failed because administrator privileges are required. Please contact an administrator to install this package.

Diagnostic Logs

UAC is set to Always Notify

[github-actions]

Logs are required for review from WSL team

If this a feature request, please reply with '/feature'. If this is a question, reply with '/question'.
Otherwise, please attach logs by following the instructions below, your issue will not be reviewed unless they are added. These logs will help us understand what is going on in your machine.

How to collect WSL logs

Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

The script will output the path of the log file once done.

If this is a networking issue, please use .\collect-wsl-logs.ps1 -LogProfile networking instead, following the instructions in Collect WSL logs for networking issues

Once completed please upload the output files to this GitHub issue.

See Collect WSL logs (recommended method).

If you choose to email these logs instead of attaching them to the bug, please send them to wsl-gh-logs@microsoft.com with the GitHub issue number in the subject, and include a link to your GitHub issue comment in the message body, and reply with '/emailed-logs'.

[hossamdash]

WslLogs-2026-09-18_15-21-54.tar.gz

[github-actions]

The log file doesn't contain any WSL traces. Please make sure that you reproduced the issue while the log collection was running.

Diagnostic information

.wslconfig found
Detected appx version: 2.7.11.0
Found no WSL traces in the logs

[hossamdash]

The log file doesn't contain any WSL traces. Please make sure that you reproduced the issue while the log collection was running.

That should be expected as wsl was off for the duration of this reproduction, It's a package management issue external to wsl.

[chemwolf6922]

Hi Hossam Mostafa (@hossamdash)
I'm able to repro this locally. This seems to be a winget issue. I filed this issue to report it: microsoft/winget-cli#6554