Confused by Code
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Uninstall and Upgrade Problems

If you're on this page, it's probably because you tried to uninstall cURL for Windows, only to see an error message saying: "Please uninstall the currently installed version of curl, and then run the installer again." If such a frustrating message did not inspire you to throw your computer out the window, you probably came back to this website to get some answers from the SOB who built the thing. Or send him a death threat. Maybe both.

I'm the SOB who built the thing, and luckily for me and my lifelong dream of not being murdered, I found a solution.

The problem occurs if you used the administrator package for version 7.35.0 but chose to install it for a single user, i.e. you ran curl-7.35.0-win64.msi, and then clicked Advanced and selected "install for this user only."

I set up the installer to check for a specific registry key to prevent a system-wide and user-only installation from being installed together, potentially causing problems I couldn't predict. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the installer performs the same checks before uninstalling.

So when you run the installer for the first time, it checks for the user-only registry key, it sees it's not there, and it lets you install the program. Then you choose to install it for one user only, and it creates the user-only registry key. Then you try to uninstall it, the installer looks for that registry key, finds it, and refuses to keep going.

Fear not. This is how to fix:

  1. Open the Command Prompt (cmd.exe).
  2. Type the following command and hit Enter:
    3. REG DELETE "HKCU\Software\Confused by Code"
  3. When prompted, type "yes" and hit Enter.
  4. Close the Command Prompt.
  5. Uninstall from the Start Menu or Control Panel as normal.

That should do the trick. The installers on the downloads page no longer allow users to choose whether to install cURL per-user or per-machine, so there should be no problems uninstalling or upgrading them. If you want to risk using my software again, head back to the downloads page for the latest version.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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