If you are trying to update your Anaconda version to a new one, you'll notice that running the new installer wouldn't work, as it complains the installation directory is non-empty.

So you should use conda to upgrade as detailed by the official docs:

conda update conda
conda update anaconda

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In Windows, if you made a "for all users" installation, it might be necessary to run from an Anaconda prompt with Administrator privileges.

This prevents the error:

ERROR conda.core.link:_execute(502): An error occurred while uninstalling package 'defaults::conda-4.5.4-py36_0'. PermissionError(13, 'Access is denied')

Open "command or conda prompt" and run:

conda update conda
conda update anaconda

It's a good idea to run both command twice (one after the other) to be sure that all the basic files are updated.

This should put you back on the latest 'releases', which contains packages that are selected by the people at Continuum to work well together.

If you want the last version of each package run (this can lead to an unstable environment):

conda update --all 

Hope this helps.

Sources:

• https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/install/update-version
• https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/1414#issuecomment-119071154