PackageNotInstalledError: Package is not installed in prefix

Question

conda update conda >> successful

conda update anaconda >> gives me error saying package is not installed in prefix.

I have single installation of Python distribution on my system. How do I solve this issue?

(base) C:\Users\asukumari>conda info

 active environment : base
active env location : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3
        shell level : 1
   user config file : C:\Users\asukumari\.condarc  populated config files : C:\Users\asukumari\.condarc
      conda version : 4.5.9
conda-build version : 3.4.1
     python version : 3.6.4.final.0
   base environment : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3  (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/pro/win-64
                      https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/pro/noarch
                      https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-64
                      https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch
      package cache : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\pkgs
                      C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs
   envs directories : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\envs
                      C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs
                      C:\Users\asukumari\.conda\envs
           platform : win-64
         user-agent : conda/4.5.9 requests/2.18.4 CPython/3.6.4 Windows/10 Windows/10.0.16299
      administrator : False
         netrc file : None
       offline mode : False

Answer 1

Usually this error, "PackageNotInstalledError: Package is not installed in prefix." is because your custom environment doesn't have the conda infrastructure. Instead, it is in your base only. To update the base environment:

conda update --name base conda

To see what version you have installed:

conda list --name base conda

example output of list;

# packages in environment at /Users/me/miniconda2:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
conda                     4.6.14                   py27_0  
conda-env                 2.6.0                h36134e3_0