I want Cursor to also be a markdown notes editor, but it’s very slow due to variety of extensions required for development. My solution is to create a blank profile, but…
The only option I have is to export profile and to import it every time, and it is so-o-o time-consuming to wait till it downloads all the extensions!
Hey, thanks for the report. Profiles in Cursor should persist across restarts, so your blank profile for markdown notes should work fine. Let’s figure out why it keeps resetting for you.
A few things that’ll help narrow it down:
Update Cursor from 3.7.42 to the latest 3.8.x and check if it still happens.
Open the Profiles editor: File > Preferences > Profiles or Ctrl+Shift+P then type Preferences: Open Profiles (UI). Check if the profile is visible right after you create it, before you restart.
Check whether the folder %APPDATA%\Cursor is inside OneDrive or any synced folder, and whether your antivirus is cleaning or quarantining it. Redirecting or wiping that folder can cause a newly created profile to disappear after a restart.
Make sure you don’t have a second Cursor install that’s writing to a different user-data directory.
Let me know what you see in step 2, and whether %APPDATA%\Cursor is being synced. That should be enough to tell where to dig next.
The profile is visible right after creation. And the folder disappears when I open Cursor next time, not when I close it. I think this might be important. Moreover, the only deleted folder is folder insideprofiles/. The profiles/ directory itself is not deleted.
I don’t use OneDrive and definetly don’t. Comodo quarantine is empty.
Thanks for the details, that helps. One key point: “quarantine is empty” and “Auto-Containment is disabled” are different things in Comodo. Quarantine stores suspicious files, while Auto-Containment virtualizes file system writes for apps that are running. So you can have an empty quarantine and still have Auto-Containment active, and that is most likely what’s intercepting the profile write.
The symptom matches that. The profile entry in the state store gets written into the virtual layer, then on the next start Cursor can’t find it there, sees a folder with no owner, and deletes it as orphaned. That is why only the nested folder disappears, while profiles/ stays.
Please check Auto-Containment, not quarantine:
In Comodo, open Containment or Tasks > Containment Tasks and see if Cursor is running in the container.
If yes, add Cursor.exe to Trusted Applications and exclude %APPDATA%\Cursor from virtualization via Containment Settings > “Do not virtualize access to the specified files/folders”.
Create the profile again and restart Cursor.
If the profile starts saving after that, it was containment. If it still happens even after fully excluding Cursor from Comodo, tell me and we can dig deeper on our side.
Thanks, this experiment helps a lot. Since you fully disabled Comodo and there was no change, this isn’t file virtualization.
The symptom “the profile shows up right away, but gets ignored or wiped on the next launch” suggests the profile folder is fine, but the list of profiles in the state store isn’t being saved. It’s here:
Hanging process. Close Cursor, then open Task Manager and make sure there are no Cursor.exe processes left. End all of them if you see any. A common cause is an old process still running and, on exit, it overwrites storage.json with its old copy, wiping the profile you just created. Once you’re sure there are no processes left, create a profile, fully close Cursor again, check Task Manager again, then reopen Cursor.
storage.json contents. Open this file in Notepad right after creating the profile, before restarting Cursor, and find userDataProfiles. The new profile entry should be there. Then fully close Cursor, open storage.json in Notepad again before launching Cursor, and check if the entry is still there. If it’s gone or rolled back before Cursor starts, something external is overwriting or restoring the file. Also check whether storage.json is set to read-only, and whether any tools or backup software are restoring %APPDATA%\Cursor.
Let me know what you see for these two checks, especially whether the userDataProfiles entry in storage.json is still there after closing Cursor. That should tell us where to look next.
Great that profiles are working now. A readonly attribute on the state file explains why the profile write was getting rolled back on the next launch.
On your second question, there’s no separate toggle to disable agentic processes on startup. Cursor doesn’t auto-start agents on its own. What usually slows startup down is extensions and project indexing, not the agent.
A few things that can реально help startup speed:
Since profiles work now, your blank profile for notes is the right approach. Keep as few extensions in it as possible.
Check which extensions take the longest to load: Settings > Application > Experimental > enable Extension Monitor, then Ctrl+Shift+P > Developer: Open Extension Monitor.
For a quick test, run cursor --disable-extensions from the command line and compare startup time. This makes it obvious if extensions are the issue.
If there’s a specific process you see during startup that you want to remove, share a screenshot or the name and we can look more closely.