Automatic update corrupts the installation

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Recently, whenever I close Cursor IDE, it attempts to perform some kind of automatic update, but no Windows permission prompt appears. As a result, the client lacks the necessary permissions to update and crashes. Now I can no longer open the IDE; instead, I have to uninstall it every time, download the latest version from the website, and reinstall it. And this happens every time I close Cursor IDE.

Steps to Reproduce

just read the Bug description.

Expected Behavior

No autoupdate or at least a working autoupdate.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 3.4.20 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310
Date: 2026-05-15T02:26:10.351Z
Layout: glass
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Additional Information

Really annoying

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

5

Hey, this is a known Windows auto-updater bug on our side. In some cases, the updater removes the old install but doesn’t finish installing the new one, so Cursor ends up uninitialized with no rollback. We’re tracking the issue, but I can’t share an ETA for a fix yet.

Until it’s fixed, here are a couple workarounds:

  1. Reinstall using the system-wide installer, not the user setup. Download the Windows installer from Cursor · Download, then during install choose Install for all users. This needs admin rights. The issue happens less often with the system setup.
  2. Turn off auto-update. Open Settings with Ctrl+Shift+,, find update.mode, and set it to manual or none. You’ll need to update manually, but the IDE should stop breaking on close.

If there are no visible updates on the fix, I’ll post here when something changes.