Hello!
Couple of days ago I closed Cursor IDE via regular cross (X) button and received 2 subsequent error messages (screenshots attached). Then the Cursor shortcut stopped working and I couldn’t locate Cursor in the system, so I reinstalled the latest version again.
But after closing the window next time the issue reproduced exactly the same way, essentially making it a one-time product.
Attached all the config and steps.
Please recommend what to do. I believe this is a serious bug and should be fix in the upcoming releases.
Hey, thanks for the detailed report with screenshots and the version. This is a known issue with the Windows auto-updater. When you close the app window, a pending update kicks in. The cleanup phase removes old files, then the install fails with Access is denied (os error 5) because the anti-virus, in your case Windows Defender, is holding file handles in the install folder. So the old binary gets removed but the new one can’t be installed. That’s why the shortcut breaks and Cursor won’t launch.
What my colleague suggested is the right direction. Whitelisting Cursor in Windows Defender removes the main cause. To make it fully stable:
Add an exclusion for the install folder: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\cursor
Fully quit Cursor before restarting or shutting down Windows, including the tray icon
If you want to completely disable auto-update: go to Settings, search for update.mode, set it to none, and update manually from Cursor · Download
If the issue already happened, reinstalling from Cursor · Download is safe. Your settings and extensions won’t be lost. They live in %APPDATA%\Cursor and %USERPROFILE%\.cursor, only the app binary is removed.
We’re tracking this issue. I can’t share an ETA for a fix yet, but your scenario matches what we’re already investigating. The idea of auto-adding an AV exclusion like other IDEs do makes sense, I’ll pass that on as feedback. Let me know if the problem comes back after whitelisting.
