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node.jswindowsnpm

How to install NodeJS LTS on Windows as a local user (without admin rights)

I'm using Windows as a simple user (I don't have any admin rights) and want to install NodeJS LTS.

On the download site I have the choice to download only the binary node.exe (which don't includes npm) or the node.msi installer which requires the admin rights to execute.

How can I manually install node.exe and also be able to use npm?

Solution

  • UPDATE 10/2018

    On Node's download page referenced in step 1. there is now a .zip archive download which contains both the nodejs executable and npm. Unpacking that to a suitable path and adding this path to your PATH environment variable (step 2.) will give you both node and npm (so you can skip steps 3. - 6.).

    Let say you want to install it into %userprofile%\Applications\nodejs-lts, let's name it <NODE_PATH>.

    1. Download the LTS node.exe binary for Windows and copy it to <NODE_PATH>.

    2. Add <NODE_PATH> to your PATH environment variable (set PATH=<NODE_PATH>;%PATH% or using Windows user interface)

    3. Download the stable at https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-{VERSION}.tgz npm package (following the documentation)

    4. Unzip the npm-{VERSION}.tgz anywhere (using 7zip for example)

    5. Launch a cmd and cd into the place where you have unzipped npm

    6. Execute: node cli.js install -gf or node bin/npm-cli.js install npm -gf on certain versions (thanks to this comment)

    The last command is specified in the Makefile for target install, target which the README.md invites to execute when manually installing.