All Terminal and VSCode Sessions Exited : [process exited with code 15 (0x0000000f)]

Windows Terminal version

1.22.11141.0

Windows build number

10.0.26100.0

Other Software

Description

While using VS Code (and other apps), the following message appears, and both VS Code and the Terminal forcefully close:

[process exited with code 15 (0x0000000f)] You can now close this terminal with Ctrl+D, or press Enter to restart.

This is extremely disruptive. Any insights or shared experiences would be appreciated.

What I've Tried

• Opened Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) and reviewed logs
• Searched ChatGPT / StackOverflow / Microsoft forums

Observations / Error Message

From Event Viewer:

A new BITS job could not be created. The current job count for the user WIN11\xxx (60) is equal to or greater than the job limit (60) specified through group policy. To correct the problem, complete or cancel the BITS jobs that haven't made progress by looking at the error, and restart the BITS service. If this error recurs, contact your system administrator and increase the per-user and per-computer Group Policy job limits.

However, AI tools claim this BITS issue is unrelated to the process exit problem.

Possible Next Steps

• Investigate whether low memory or disk space in WSL2 is causing this—adjust configuration via wsl.conf.
• Check if the BITS job limit (60) is actually causing the issue and how to raise it.

Environment

OS: Ubuntu noble 24.04 x86_64  
Host: Windows Subsystem for Linux – Ubuntu‑24.04 (WSL2, build 2.5.9.0)  
Kernel: Linux 6.6.87.2‑microsoft‑standard‑WSL2  
Uptime: ~10 min  
Shell: fish 3.7.0  
WM: WSLg (Wayland)  
Terminal: Windows Terminal  
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X  
Memory: ~7.76 GiB (only 662 MiB free)  
Swap: Disabled  
Storage:  
  - `/`: 282 GiB / 1 TiB (28%)  
  - `/mnt/c`: 1.8 TiB / 1.82 TiB (99%) full  
  - Other drives nearing capacity  
Network: WSL eth0 – 10.2.0.2/32  
Locale: en_US.UTF‑8

References

• Windows system error codes (0–499)
• VS Code / Windows Terminal issue #16363 on GitHub-
• ChatGPT thread: 68730c12-efb0-8009-92cc-08fe0a7499b5

Request

If you have any relevant information—e.g. similar experiences, causes, or solutions—please share it. This issue is critical and urgent for me.

Let me know if you'd like me to tweak formatting or add more context!

Steps to reproduce

• High memory pressure may triggers exit code 15?

• WSL2 uses a lightweight VM and allocates RAM dynamically—exhaustion can abruptly kill terminal processes

• Exit code 15 is SIGTERM, hinting at a forced termination (likely by OOM or WSL system)

• WSL memory usage was already high (~92% used) and swap disabled

• Reproduce with stress-ng:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install stress-ng
  stress-ng --vm 2 --vm-keep --vm-bytes 90% --timeout 60s
  

• Then run any interactive command in VS Code or terminal and see if it exits with code 15

Expected Behavior

No response

Actual Behavior

Both Windows Terminal and VS Code's integrated terminal abruptly closes simultaneously.

Start with the Event Viewer BITS job-limit message and the WSL2 environment details in the issue, then examine the proposed stress-ng reproduction. Compare the simultaneous Windows Terminal and VS Code terminal exits under the reported memory, swap, and disk conditions; done means identifying a reproducible cause and documenting an actionable resolution.