Uninstalling and resetting Canopy v1

Notes 

• To uninstall Canopy version 2, see this article instead.
  
  
• Note: If you already have Canopy 1.7.4 installed, are having problems and just want to do a clean reset of it, then we suggest just doing a "Full Reset", i.e. steps 4 and 5 from the procedure below. This will be much quicker than a full uninstall & re-install. It only requires deleting some directories, then re-starting Canopy, which will re-create those directories to reset a clean working environment.

Windows

Note: If during install you encountered the error "The specified account already exists", please see this article.

1) From the Canopy preferences menu, Unset Canopy as your default Python (this step is not available on very early versions of Canopy). 

2) Restart your computer.

3) Uninstall Enthought Canopy from:

Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs (Windows XP).

Control Panel > Programs and Features (Windows 7, 8, 10, or Vista).

For Windows 8 & 10, be sure to use the Control Panel, and not the System Settings > Apps and Features (which will often fail to uninstall Canopy)

4) For each Canopy user, delete one or more of the directories below, which contain that user's "System" and "User" virtual environments, and any user macros.

• Deleting "System" removes the environment where the Canopy GUI application runs; it will be re-created the next time that you start Canopy. This is almost always recommended, unless you are using a specialized add-on application such as Virtual Core or Canopy Geo, in which case you might need to reinstall it.
• Deleting "User" removes all your installed Python packages; it will be re-created with only the packages bundled into the Canopy installer, the next time that you start Canopy. This is usually recommended for a clean starting package set, unless you have many external packages installed, which would be painful for you to re-install manually.
• Deleting the third directory (the Canopy directory at the first level in your home directory) will remove any Canopy macros which you may have written. It is usually empty, and if it is not, you may want to keep it to preserve any Canopy macros that you have written.
• Deleting the fourth file (.enstaller4rc in your home directory) will remove some login information, after which you may need to log in again. If this file was corrupted, it may have caused problems.

(For 32-bit Canopy, replace "Canopy" with "Canopy32"):

Note that to see the AppData or Local Settings directories in Windows Explorer, you must set Explorer to show hidden files (Computer / Organize / Folder & Search Options / View / Advanced settings / Show hidden...) 

# Windows 7, 8, 10, or Vista:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Enthought\Canopy\System
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Enthought\Canopy\User
C:\Users\<username>\Canopy
C:\Users\<username>\.enstaller4rc

# Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Enthought\Canopy\System
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Enthought\Canopy\User
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Canopy
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.enstaller4rc

5) (This step is not normally required, but can be useful if you are having problems and want to do a full reset of your Canopy installation.) Delete the files "locations.cfg" and "preferences.ini" from each user's Canopy configuration / preferences directory.

If problems persist, or for complete Canopy removal, delete this directory entirely; if you do so, the user will lose bookmarks and recent file list.

6) (This step is not needed if you plan to re-install Canopy; it is only needed if you are trying to remove Canopy completely): If you did not do step 1 for whatever reason, then manually delete any of the following keys from your Windows registry, if they refer to Canopy:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Python\PythonCore\2.7\InstallPath
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Python\PythonCore\2.7\PythonPath
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Python\PythonCore\2.7\InstallPath
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Python\PythonCore\2.7\PythonPath

7) Remove any references to Canopy from your PATH environment variable. This should already have been done automatically in step (1); also, any such references should be harmless because of step (4), but to avoid future confusion, this is a good time to check. 

From the Windows start menu, open a Command Prompt window, and type the command
path | find /i "canopy"

If you see output from this command, then your PATH contains references to Canopy. Please remove them. The article "Editing environment variables on Windows" may be helpful if this process is unfamiliar to you.

8) Restart your computer.

 

Note: Sometimes Windows will fail to fully uninstall a program, making it difficult to install a new version or alternative program. To help work around this problem, Microsoft has provided the tiny utility "MsiZap.exe", which can forcibly remove all references to your Canopy installation, from the Windows registry. This utility is freely available as part of the Microsoft Windows SDK, and is also downloadable here for convenience (the MD5 hash of this file is 8a6469cbed9cde987d12f857dba97640). 

MsiZap requires admin privileges to run.

After downloading, do not try to open/run it in your browser or from Windows Explorer (this will accomplish nothing, good or bad). Instead, to run it:

1) Open a Command Prompt window from the Windows Start menu. Type the following commands in this window.

2) Use the CD command to navigate to your download directory. On most systems, typing this will work:

cd %USERPROFILE%\Downloads

3) For a Canopy 64-bit installation (any version number, because the product GUID does not change between versions) type:

msizap T {93D7DF53-FDD4-4270-B83C-1EBC15FA1A87}

Or, for a Canopy 32-bit installation, type:

msizap T {7C13AA42-1B81-4C70-963D-D2772F8D7F33}

In either case, if you still have the Canopy installer file available, you can refer to the installer file instead of specifying the product code. For example:

msizap T canopy-1.5.4-win-64.msi 

If you had installed Canopy "For all users", then you should specify "msizap WT" rather than "msizap T".

4) MsiZap does not remove the Canopy Core environment. To remove this (in addition to deleting the directories described in steps 4 and 5 in the previous section), delete the following (For 32-bit Canopy, replace "Canopy" with "Canopy32"):

# Windows 7, 8, 10, or Vista:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Enthought\Canopy\App

# Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Enthought\Canopy\App 

 

Mac OSX

1) From the Canopy preferences menu, Unset Canopy as your default Python (this step is not available on very early versions of Canopy).

2) Restart your computer.

3) Remove the following directories:

/Applications/Canopy.app
/Applications/Enthought Canopy (64-bit) 

4) For each Canopy user, delete one or all of the directories below, which contain that user's "System" and "User" virtual environments, and any user macros.

• Deleting "System" removes the environment where the Canopy GUI application runs; it will be re-created the next time that you start Canopy. This is almost always recommended, unless you are using a specialized add-on application such as Virtual Core or Canopy Geo, in which case you might need to reinstall it.
• Deleting "User" removes all your installed Python packages; it will be re-created with only the packages bundled into the Canopy installer, the next time that you start Canopy. This is usually recommended for a clean starting package set, unless you have many external packages installed, which would be painful for you to re-install manually.
• Deleting the third directory (~/Library/Canopy) will remove any Canopy macros which you may have written. It is usually empty, and if it is not, you may want to keep it to preserve any Canopy macros that you have written.
• Deleting the fourth file (~/.enstaller4rc) will remove some login information, after which you may need to log in again. If this file was corrupted, it may have caused problems.

(for 32-bit Canopy, replace "64bit" with "32bit"): 

/Users/<your-username>/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/System
/Users/<your-username>/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User
/Users/<your-username>/Library/Canopy
/Users/<your-username>/.enstaller4rc

5) (This step is not normally required, but can be useful if you are having problems and want to do a full reset of your Canopy installation.) Delete the files "locations.cfg" and "preferences.ini" from each user's Canopy configuration / preferences directory.

If problems persist, or for complete Canopy removal, delete this directory entirely; if you do so, the user will lose bookmarks and recent file list.

6) If you are uninstalling completely, edit the following files to delete any lines which reference Canopy (usually, the Canopy-related lines will have been commented out by step 1 but on some system configurations the lines might remain):

/Users/<your-username>/.bash_profile
/Users/<your-username/.profile
/Users/<your-username>/.bashrc

 7) Restart your computer.

 

Linux

1) From the Canopy preferences menu, Unset Canopy as your default Python (this step is not available on very early versions of Canopy).

2) Restart your computer.

3) Remove the "~/Canopy" directory (or the directory where you installed Canopy).

4) For each Canopy user, delete one or more of the directories or files below, which contain that user's "System" and "User" virtual environments, and any user macros, and some login information.

• Deleting "System" removes the environment where the Canopy GUI application runs; it will be re-created the next time that you start Canopy. This is almost always recommended, unless you are using a specialized add-on application such as Virtual Core or Canopy Geo, in which case you might need to reinstall it.
• Deleting "User" removes all your installed Python packages; it will be re-created with only the packages bundled into the Canopy installer, the next time that you start Canopy. This is usually recommended for a clean starting package set, unless you have many external packages installed, which would be painful for you to re-install manually.
• Deleting the third directory (~/canopy) will remove any Canopy macros which you may have written. It is usually empty, and if it is not, you may want to keep it to preserve any Canopy macros that you have written.
• Deleting the fourth file (~/.enstaller4rc) will remove some login information, after which you may need to log in again. If this file was corrupted, it may have caused problems.

(for 32-bit Canopy, replace "64bit" with "32bit"): 

~/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/System
~/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User
~/canopy
~/.enstaller4rc

5) (This step is not normally required, but can be useful if you are having problems and want to do a full reset of your Canopy installation.) Delete the files "locations.cfg" and "preferences.ini" from each user's~ Canopy configuration / preferences directory.

If problems persist, or for complete Canopy removal, delete this directory entirely; if you do so, the user will lose bookmarks and recent file list.

6) If you are uninstalling completely, edit the following files to delete any lines which reference Canopy (usually, the Canopy-related lines will have been commented out by step 1 but on some system configurations the lines might remain):

~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.profile

 7) Restart your computer.

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