# Help to uninstall and reinstall local - retain existing local sites

**URL:** <https://community.localwp.com/t/help-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-local-retain-existing-local-sites/10768>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [January 29, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://community.localwp.com/t/help-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-local-retain-existing-local-sites/10768 "2019-01-29T16:31:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![quizzical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@quizzical](https://community.localwp.com/u/quizzical)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://community.localwp.com/t/help-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-local-retain-existing-local-sites/10768/1 "2019-01-29T16:31:10Z")

</div>

Okay, so I am not a technical person. I am locked out of local with an error message “Error setting up host only network on machine host.”

I was hoping to get some support advice here to resolve the issue, but I see that many such questions are never answered. So I am planning to simply uninstall and reinstall LBFW. If I do so will I lose the existing local sites? Is there a recommendation to save the local site files before I uninstall?

Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![flycrum](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/community.localwp.com/flycrum/32/5862_2.png) [@flycrum](https://community.localwp.com/u/flycrum)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://community.localwp.com/t/help-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-local-retain-existing-local-sites/10768/2 "2019-01-30T23:43:13Z")

</div>

Hello again @quizzical! That’s an excellent question. Luckily, we have a tutorial on how to do just that. I’ll include the link below, but basically you’ll need zip up each site found in your `Local Sites` directory and put them somewhere safe. After that, you can go ahead and uninstall and reinstall Local and then import them back in one by one. With that said, I would encourage you to try what I mentioned in your [other post](https://local.getflywheel.com/community/t/error-setting-up-host-only-network-on-machine-start/10745) first, and hopefully you don’t have to do these extra steps.

Here’s the [link](https://getflywheel.com/wordpress-support/how-to-import-a-wordpress-site-into-local/#restore-local-site-from-site-files) on how to restore Local sites.

Let me know how it goes.

Chris

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/community.localwp.com/system/32/1_2.png) [@system](https://community.localwp.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 6:36pm UTC](https://community.localwp.com/t/help-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-local-retain-existing-local-sites/10768/3 "2020-08-25T18:36:20Z")

</div>

Closed on August 25, 2020, 6:36pm UTC