Anaconda Uninstaller Does Not Work Due to Pre_uninstaller

[pratyush-k-singh]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

What happened?

I tried to make a new anaconda environment, and must have messed up, as doing so made it impossible for me to open up the Anaconda navigator (and thus use anaconda-clean). After fiddling around a bit, I decided to just uninstall it, yet couldn't do it using the application they gave or control panel, as it gave an error about how pre_uninstall couldn't be run.

Then in a rather stupid moment of annoyance, I deleted the entire folder, before bringing it back from the Recycling. Now, however, I can't even run the uninstaller, and the control panel does not detect the existence of the app (not much of a loss, as this didn't work before).

I was able to successfully redownload and uninstall another version of Anaconda without issue, but I can no longer set Anaconda as my default python environment due to the python already in the folder. As for trying to uninstall it now, I get this error:

Conda Info

'conda' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Conda Config

'conda' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Conda list

'conda' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Additional Context

No response

[marcoesters]

The uninstaller checks for two sentinel files so that it doesn't delete a directory it's not supposed to delete: https://github.com/conda/constructor/blob/main/constructor/nsis/main.nsi.tmpl#L716

However, restoring it from the recycling bin should restore those, too, so I'm not sure why this is breaking. How do you run the uninstaller?

What you can do is the following:

1. Delete that directory again.
2. Re-install Anaconda into the same location.
3. Uninstall it using the uninstaller. That should get rid of everything.

but I can no longer set Anaconda as my default python environment due to the python already in the folder

This should still be available (just unchecked by default). What is the error message that you're seeing?