diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 309952a..70ba140 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: igvShiny
 Title: igvShiny: a wrapper of Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV - an interactive
     tool for visualization and exploration integrated genomic data)
-Version: 1.0.3
+Version: 1.0.4
 Date: 2024-08-25
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Paul","Shannon", role = c("aut"), 
@@ -29,7 +29,6 @@ Imports:
     httr,
     jsonlite,
     randomcoloR,
-    RCurl,
     utils
 Suggests: 
     BiocStyle,
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 95386d5..5156899 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+## igvShiny 1.0.4 - 2024-08-25
+* switch from Rcurl::url.exists to httr::http_error (Windows compatibility)
+
 ## igvShiny 1.0.3 - 2024-08-25
 * stop using Amazon S3 URLs by default