Authentication error on Windows desktop Cursor App

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

In my cursor agent - all day long it has said 'you need to log out and log back in - but doing that a dozen times doesn’t solve the issue. Do I need to do something like uninstall and reinstall the app on my laptop?
(I’m not a developer, so I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this - Sorry if I’m wrong)

Steps to Reproduce

It has been reproducing itself for the last 10 hours - whenever I try to enter an instruction, it responds with Authentication error - If you are logged in, try logging out and back in. Request ID: 0b17e2cd-27a9-4e8c-beab-2e8e7ca44a20

Expected Behavior

It should take my instructions and act on them, like it did for the first few days since I signed up with Cursor Pro

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Not sure of the version - but it did ask me to update, so I did that right before the error started as well

For AI issues: which model did you use?

not sure (sorry, not a developer) but I didn’t change it from whatever was the default

For AI issues: add Request ID with privacy disabled

If you are logged in, try logging out and back in. Request ID: 0b17e2cd-27a9-4e8c-beab-2e8e7ca44a20

Additional Information

Has been happening for the last 10 hours - lost a full day of productivity

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

5

Hey, thanks for the report, and sorry you lost a whole day to this. You came to the right place, your account is fine.

Here’s what’s happening: when you reset your Cursor password yesterday, it signs out all devices for security. The app on your PC is still holding on to the old session, so every request gets rejected even though the UI still looks like you’re signed in. Logging out and back in on cursor.com doesn’t refresh the app session, so that’s why it didn’t help. No need to reinstall anything.

Try this exactly step by step:

  1. In Cursor, open Settings (gear icon in the top right, or Ctrl+Shift+J).
  2. Find the account section and click Sign Out.
  3. Fully quit Cursor: right click the Cursor icon in the Windows system tray (bottom right, near the clock) and click Quit. Just closing the window isn’t enough.
  4. Open Cursor again and click Sign In. Finish signing in in the browser and wait until it brings you back to Cursor.
  5. Send one message to the agent.

Did the message go through after step 5? If not, send a new Request ID and your version from Help > About, and I’ll take another look.