Cursor uninstalled itself and didn’t install afterwards continued

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@mk18, the log is super helpful, thanks. It shows something very different from a “reboot between phases”:

Delete directory recursively: ".../cursor/resources" (attempt 1..11)
ERRO Access is denied. (os error 5)

inno_updater can’t delete the resources folder because some process is holding file handles on it. After 11 retries the updater gives up, and Cursor ends up half-uninstalled. The fact this happened 3 times in 2 days on 3 different versions means something is consistently blocking that specific folder.

To narrow it down, can you share:

  • Which antivirus or EDR are you using? Defender, Sentinel, CrowdStrike, Bitdefender, or something corporate
  • Is it a user install at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\cursor\ or a system-wide install at C:\Program Files\cursor\? Or both at the same time, see Windows updater fails with dual install (system-wide + per-user) and leaks ~2GB of temp folders
  • Was wrangler running in the background? Is it installed globally or per-project? It might have an open handle on something inside resources/
  • Is OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive syncing the Cursor folder? They often keep handles open
  • Can you open Sysinternals Process Explorer, find the process that has a handle on cursor\resources during the update, and share the process name?

Workaround for now so this doesn’t happen again: go to File > Preferences > Settings, search for update.mode, set it to none. Then update manually.