I sometimes use MSFS on a machine with WSL2 enabled, just because I like to use a Linux build with Windows. This isn’t ideal for pure gaming performance but I normally just make sure it is all shut down before starting up. Yes, disabling the Hypervisor etc is a better thing to do for gaming, but for me I don’t notice it a lot and saves rebooting etc.
This post is just to let people know that a recent Windows 11 update has now enabled File Explorer Integration for WSL 2 automatically, and that the process vmmem will now start and claim some memory when it does so. It will be loaded up by any MSFS Load Flight Plan dialog or even FMS interactions that browse the file system. It will go away again eventually as idle, but is fairly greedy for memory (2GB+) by default, so worth knowing about.
The new ‘Linux’ tree in the File Explorer is causing this. You can disable the new File Explorer integration if you want, with instructions here:
Alternatively you could just do a CMD prompt WSL --shutdown if you see it come up as well. It is not something you can kill in the Task Manager. If you have lots and lots of memory then it might not even matter to do so.
Anyway, probably not very useful for many people, but wanted to pass on the tip.