I was working with Cursor and set up a new project which connected with the MCP and seemed fine. I asked Cursor if I could work on 2 projects at once and it explained how I open another version of cursor, which I did and again everything seemed ok.
I then asked cursor to do a repetitive task for me on one of the instances and it went away “thinking…” It returned saying that Cursor was taking longer than expected and gave me the option resume or reopen. I tried both options but it kept returning with the same error. I then closed both instances and when I tried reopening it, I get an error " Windows cannot access specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.
It doesn’t say what the file is, but the heading points at something in my User directory to do with Internet Explorer!!! Please see the attached screenshot.
Hey, thanks for the report and the screenshot. I can reassure you about one thing right away: the ...\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\... path in the window title is just a Windows system folder where taskbar shortcuts are stored. It’s a legacy name and it’s not related to Internet Explorer or anything malicious. The shortcut points to Cursor.exe, which is currently missing.
What happened: when you closed both windows after the freeze, the auto-updater ran and the install ended up in a broken state. The old Cursor.exe was removed, and the new one didn’t finish writing. This is a known Windows issue we’re tracking. I can’t share an exact timeline yet.
How to recover:
Reinstall Cursor from Cursor · Download. Your settings and chat history in %APPDATA%\Cursor will be kept.
Check your antivirus or Windows Defender quarantine for Cursor.exe. Add %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\cursor to exclusions.
After reinstalling, pin Cursor to the taskbar again. The old shortcut is broken.
To reduce the chance it happens again:
Fully quit Cursor before shutdown or restart, including the tray icon. You have stdio MCP servers running WordPress, and their child processes can stay alive after the window closes and keep install files locked, which can break the updater.
Optional: turn off auto-update in Settings → Application → Update.
Thanks so much, I’m up and running again. As for shutting down whilst Cursor is still running, normally I would get a warning and I would cancel the shutdown until everything important is finished. I do not think I got this message. Any, I’ll double check in future.
