Cannot uninstall numpy 1.21.2, RECORD file not found

Question

I encountered a problem while installing pip install pytorch-nlp.
The error is as follows:

ERROR: Could not install packages due to an OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'c:\users\pcpcpc\anaconda3\envs\pytorch\lib\site-packages\numpy-1.21`.2.dist-info\METADATA'

So I tried to reinstall numpy by running:

pip install --force-reinstall --no-deps numpy==1.21.2

But I get the error:

ERROR: Cannot uninstall numpy 1.21.2, RECORD file not found. You might be able to recover from this via: 'pip install --force-reinstall --no-deps numpy==1.21.2'.

I had the same error, but also multiple problems when installing other libraries including an ERROR: Could not install packages due to an OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory where I had to enable Windows Long Path Support. After enabling the long path support, I removed every numpy file and directory inside the site-packages of the virtual environment and reinstalled numpy, which then worked. I'm not 100% sure the problems are related, but they might be. Maybe also numpy was installed for a previous python version which I didn't want to use for the virtual env. — xuiqzy
– xuiqzy, Commented Feb 20, 2024 at 19:07
I guess the question can be changed to how to resolve faulty numpy installations — Kayvan Shah
– Kayvan Shah, Commented Apr 16 at 18:24

Pablo Bianchi · Accepted Answer · 2024-02-14 16:37:26Z

92

As @Phoenix suggested, you might have an incomplete installation of numpy in your site-packages folder.

Find your site-packages folder.

SITE_PACKAGES_FOLDER=$(python3 -c "import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_paths()['purelib'])")
echo $SITE_PACKAGES_FOLDER

Check for extraneous numpy packages from your site-packages folder.
```
ls $SITE_PACKAGES_FOLDER/numpy*
```

Trash extraneous packages.

pip install trash-cli
trash-put $SITE_PACKAGES_FOLDER/numpy*

Reinstall numpy.
```
pip install --upgrade numpy
```

edited Feb 14, 2024 at 16:37

Pablo Bianchi

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answered Feb 14, 2022 at 22:54

Roy Hyunjin Han

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Comments

Kayvan Shah · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-13 20:06:26Z

25

None of the above solutions worked for me.

What worked for me:

Delete that particular folder from the site-packages
- Only delete the folder with the version number and not the folder that has Python modules and files
- Delete that folder with metadata files matching the numpy version in the warning and error message in the installation traceback
Re-install the package
- pip install numpy just as you would do
This works for both cases
- global environment
- local or project-related environment
Else you will have to delete that environment and create a new one

edited Nov 13, 2023 at 20:06

answered May 27, 2022 at 7:30

Kayvan Shah

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3 Comments

Kayvan Shah Over a year ago

My answer is a bit manual but kinda similar to the top answer

Brian H Over a year ago

Dunno if it's the "right" way but it worked for me! Just blow it up and try again :)

Mai Over a year ago

This answer is the only one that worked for me , for anyone that comes later and doens't know where the site packages folder is: the path is in the error. these types of errors are why I prefer working on ubuntu or mint

Benjamin Loison · Accepted Answer · 2024-01-11 21:35:17Z

19

Try manually deleting the numpy files/directories and then do

pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall <package>

One way to find the numpy files is to run

python -c "import numpy; print(numpy.__file__)"

For example, this prints out

/home/tink-user/workspace/.conda_envs/tink-payment-categorization/lib/python3.7/site-packages/numpy/__init__.py

for me. So you can go there:

cd /home/tink-user/workspace/.conda_envs/tink-payment-categorization/lib/python3.7/site-packages

then you can check with something like this to see which numpys are there:

ls numpy*
ls | grep numpy

Delete the numpy directories and try force reinstalling (pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall <package>).

Conda

This also happened to me in a conda environment after I ended up with multiple numpy installations and tried to manually delete them by removing the directories in site-packages. I had to force reinstall with conda (I think after manually deleting the directories for numpy): conda install numpy --force-reinstall.

edited Jan 11, 2024 at 21:35

Benjamin Loison

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answered Sep 4, 2021 at 17:16

wordsforthewise

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4 Comments

Phoenix Over a year ago

What if anaconda isn't installed?

wordsforthewise Over a year ago

maybe pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall <package>

Phoenix Over a year ago

It didn't work. Gives the same error as the OP. Upon investigation, I found that there were two dist-info for numpy, one for each version in my site-packages. This happened after I had tried to upgrade numpy. Deleting the older dist-info fixed it for me.

Andre Goulart Jan 29 at 13:42

conda install numpy --force-reinstall worked for me! \o/

Franck Dernoncourt · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-13 04:59:12Z

8

pip install --force-reinstall --no-deps numpy==1.21.2 --ignore-installed

This should solve the problem.

edited Oct 13 at 4:59

Franck Dernoncourt

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answered Oct 11, 2024 at 19:14

Aakash Agarwal

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Comments

Joosep Parts · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-19 06:24:21Z

0

Dealing with Ansible I had conflicting items of docker and docker-py. Only one should be present.

- name: Uninstall conflicting Docker Python modules
  pip:
    name:
      - docker
      - docker-py
    state: absent

- name: Install Docker Python module
  pip:
    name: docker
    state: present

answered Apr 19, 2023 at 6:24

Joosep Parts

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Comments

Franck Dernoncourt · Accepted Answer · 2025-10-13 04:59:51Z

-1

Try to run this command:

python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip

It worked for me to fix:

Cannot uninstall numpy 1.21.2, RECORD file not found

edited Oct 13 at 4:59

Franck Dernoncourt

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answered Dec 6, 2024 at 9:05

Naveen kumar Kota

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