Finding unidentified processes in WSL

If an unidentified process is generating a web site

Try to load it in an incognito / Private window
Open http://localhost:PORT/... in a brand new private window.

• Works there too → real server is running.
• Fails there → old tab is just showing cached content.

curl test

In a Windows or in WSL:

curl -v http://localhost:8081/

• Connection refused / timeout → backend is dead.
• HTTP 200 with HTML → something is definitely serving.

Who owns the port

In a Windows PowerShell window with Admin rights:

netstat -abno | findstr :8081

In a Windows PowerShell window with Admin rights:

tasklist /FI "PID eq <PID from above>"

In WSL (if wslrelay.exe is involved):

sudo ss -lntp | grep 8081
sudo lsof -i :8081

To kill the processes in WSL, use the PIDs returned by the command above

sudo kill PID1 PID2

WARNING: To permanently disable the docker and docker.socket in WSL you may execute the following commands, but maybe those processes are necessary for the normal operation of the WSL system.

# 1. Disable Docker and its socket so they don't start automatically
sudo systemctl disable docker.service docker.socket

# 2. Stop the socket right now so nothing can auto-start dockerd in this session
sudo systemctl stop docker.socket

# 3. Sanity check
systemctl status docker
systemctl status docker.socket