⚔️ Crash #4: The Emulator War

"I just deleted a game emulator. Why is my AI assistant dead?"

Months before I fell down the AI rabbit hole, I installed an Android emulator on my laptop. You know the type — "this phone game would look better on a bigger screen." Harmless decision. Right?

I played for a few weeks. Got bored. Uninstalled.

Forgot about it completely.

The Ghost

Fast forward three months. I am deep in my AI rabbit hole. WSL2 is running. My local models are humming. I have achieved things.

Then one morning I open the terminal, type a command, and Windows spits this at me:

HCS_E_SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE

I stare at the screen.

Then I stare harder.

Nothing changes.

For those of you who, like me, did not major in computer science: this error means virtualization broke. The thing that lets your Linux subsystem exist inside Windows? Gone. Poof. No explanation.

I did not install anything new. I did not change settings. I literally just woke up, made coffee, sat down, and my computer had decided to betray me while I was sleeping.

Two Hours of Pain

Here is what "debugging" looks like when you are not a developer:

1. Google the error code
2. Read three forum posts in languages you barely understand
3. Try the first solution → nothing
4. Try the second solution → worse
5. Restart the computer → still broken
6. Stare at the ceiling
7. Try solution three → computer freezes
8. Restart again
9. Type the same error into Google with slightly different words
10. Find a Reddit thread from 2021 with two upvotes
11. Try that guy's solution → IT WORKS

Two hours. Twelve browser tabs. One Reddit hero from 2021 who will never know he saved my sanity.

What Actually Happened

Remember that Android emulator I uninstalled months ago?

It had hijacked Windows' virtualization layer — the same layer WSL2 needs to run. When I deleted the emulator, it didn't clean up after itself. It left a wound in the system. And that wound festered for months until one day it just... collapsed.

The emulator and WSL2 were never supposed to share a computer. They were fighting over the same resources — and I was the collateral damage.

An app I forgot existed broke my AI assistant three months later. That is not a bug. That is a horror movie premise.

What I Learned

Your computer's virtualization layer is a house of cards. Remove one card — even a card you forgot was there — and the whole thing can collapse.

Also: Windows 11 Home edition is not your friend. It hides the virtualization settings you need to debug. Pro edition has them right there in the Windows Features menu. Home edition? "Those settings are for advanced users who know what they're doing." Translation: they buried them because they do not trust you.

I spent half my debugging time just finding the settings I needed to check.

🛡️ Golden Rule Reminder

Nothing is unrelated. That game emulator you installed last year? That VPN you tested once and forgot? They can all come back to haunt your AI setup. The only protection is isolation.

Run everything in a VM. If WSL2 was inside a virtual machine, the emulator's leftovers could not have touched it. The VM has its own virtualization layer — a clean room that your host's chaos cannot reach. I did not know this yet when Crash #4 happened. But Crash #5 is where I finally figure it out.

This is Crash #4 in an ongoing series.

← Crash #2: When the Internet Betrayed Me | Crash #5: The Great OS Migration →

💬 What's Next?

This series isn't finished — and honestly, I don't know what to cover after Crash #8.

What's a problem you've hit with AI that nobody writes about? Could be a tool that broke, a concept that didn't click, a setup that went sideways. Drop it below.

If it's something I've wrestled with too (probably more than once), I'll write it up.