Conda install and update do not work also solving environment get errors

Question

I am using anaconda as below:

(base) C:\Users\xxx>conda info       active environment : base     active env location : C:\Users\xxx\Documents\ANACONDA             shell level : 1        user config file : C:\Users\xxx\.condarc  populated config files : C:\Users\xxx\.condarc           conda version : 4.7.11     conda-build version : 3.18.9          python version : 3.6.9.final.0        virtual packages :        base environment : C:\Users\xxx\Documents\ANACONDA  (writable)            channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-64                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/win-64                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/noarch                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-64                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-64                           https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch           package cache : C:\Users\xxx\Documents\ANACONDA\pkgs                           C:\Users\xxx\.conda\pkgs                           C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs        envs directories : C:\Users\xxx\Documents\ANACONDA\envs                           C:\Users\xxx\.conda\envs                           C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs                platform : win-64              user-agent : conda/4.7.11 requests/2.22.0 CPython/3.6.9 Windows/10 Windows/10.0.16299           administrator : False              netrc file : None            offline mode : False  

Now I have 2 issues that stop my work. 1) I cannot use conda install for any package. It will give me the error in solving environment list this:

failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.  

then it will fail again and give message like this:

Found conflicts! Looking for incompatible packages. This can take several minutes.  Press CTRL-C to abort. 

Even after the checking for incompatible packages, it didn't give me the solution.

2) When I want to upgrade or downgrade conda by the command:

conda update -n base conda 

or

conda install conda = 4.6.11 

It will give me errors again in the solving environment, and I think this is related to the first issue.

Now I cannot use conda for anything, please advise and thank you!

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem and I couldn't find a solution, but I did find a workaround. If you create an env and activate that env and then do the install, it seems to work just fine. If you don't need a lot of libraries I would try that.

Commands are:

1. Create env

conda create --name myenv 

2. Activate the env

conda activate myenv