Troubleshooting

Symptom	Meaning / fix
dockup has not been setup yet run "dockup setup" to set it up.	Nothing installed — run dockup setup
pipe is held by another program / pipe held by another program, not dockup	Something else holds dockup_engine (a second dockup foreground/daemon, never Docker Desktop — that owns docker_engine) — stop it first
Bare docker talks to the wrong daemon	Docker Desktop holds the default pipe — stop it, or point at dockup explicitly with -H npipe:////./pipe/dockup_engine
ps shows starting...	Bridge is up, engine still booting — wait; it flips to running via systemd self-heal
dockup is not installed — autostart skipped	Login boot with nothing installed — run dockup setup first
stopped (stale daemon pid ... — run dockup doctor)	Crash/reboot leftover — dockup doctor clears it
Ctrl+C doesn't stop the foreground	Press it again — the second interrupt forces exit. Or run dockup shutdown from another terminal
Corrupt config.json	Tolerated (warns, continues with defaults); delete it and any command recreates it
wsl --version fails	Update WSL (wsl --update); systemd needs a recent Store WSL
Setup download stalls	Needs internet; transient files stay in %TEMP% (dockup-rootfs-*.tar.gz) for forensics

If the engine answers inside WSL (wsl -d dockup -u root -- docker version) but not through the pipe, check dockup daemon log and dockup doctor — and if the distro itself was modified, dockup restore before anything drastic.