npm is not recognized as internal or external command operable program or batch file

Question

I am completely new to nodejs  I am trying to get nodejs to work on my Windows 2008 box in order to install Karma which I would use for TDDing my AngularJs code  I have done the following steps so far   Install using Chocolatey     npm is not recognised Install using 64-bit nodejs installer from nodejs org     npm is not recognised At this stage  running where npm gives me c  User  lt Username gt  AppData Roaming npm which has nothing in it I figure out that nodejs is installed in C  Program Files nodejs  Opening a command prompt in this directory makes npm work fine  So I added C  Program Files nodejs to PATH only to get the same error again that npm is not recognized One of the github issues on nodejs repository says that I need to restart the machine and it would fix  But that has not helped so far I do see a Node js icon in my Start - gt  Programms mennu which takes me to nodejs console but not sure what to do with that     Have I missed any important step in the process   Edit  I figured out that if I open  Nodejs command prompt  from program files  then npm is recognized  How do I make it work on a normal command prompt   Edit  After node I started facing a similar problem with another application  I posted this question on superuser and as rightly pointed out by the accepted answer  I had an additional quote in my PATH which was causing issues with all the paths added after the quote  I have a feeling that some Chocolatey install adds this troubling quote but I am just not sure which one

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I ran into this problem the other day on my Windows 7 machine  Problem wasn t my path  but I had to use escaped forward slashes instead of backslashes like this     scripts          script       bin  script sh

User · Answer

1 - Close CMD Window 2 - Add C  Program Files nodejs to PATH variable 3 - Open new CMD  type  npm -v and enjoy

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Just add    C  Program Files nodejs    To the end of your Path variable on the  User variable  section of the Environment Variables on the System Properties   After that  reopen your command prompt and type  npm   This should work

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If the package is successfully installed and still shows the message   npm  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file      Click windows start button  Look for  ALL APPS   you will see Node js and Node js Command prompt  there   You can run the Node js Command prompt as administrator and soon as its run it will show the message  Your environment has been set up for using Node js 6 3 0  x64  and npm     and then it works from there

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For Windows users  A picture tells a thousand words  Reference  npm not recognized as internal or external command  Note  this is my own blog

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Adding the environment variable for nodejs path will solve this problem https   codetolive in development npm-is-not-recognized-as-internal-or-external-command-operable-program-or-batch-file

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Check npm config by command   npm config list   It needs properties   prefix   global  prefix  and  node bin location      userconfig C  Users username  npmrc cache    C   ProgramData  npm-cache  msvs version    2015  prefix    C   ProgramData  npm  python    C   Python27    registry    http   registry com api npm npm-packages      globalconfig C  ProgramData npm etc npmrc cache    C   ProgramData  npm-cache  prefix    C   ProgramData  npm     node bin location   C  Program Files nodejs node exe   cwd   C  WINDOWS system32   In this case it needs to add these paths to the end of environment variable PATH    C  Program Files nodejs C  ProgramData npm

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If everything looks fine  I would advice to check this for PATHEXT  CMD must be added

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Don t forget to run cmd as admin

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We need to install nodejs and nothing else do we need to do and then simply use command prompt and change directory to the project in which you want to install npm and then use npm install command  It has worked for me

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I installed Node js and while trying to install Ionic and cordova using this piece of code   npm install -g cordova ionic   I faced the above error  I added  C  Program Files nodejs  to my Environment Variable  PATH   But still was unable to get over this issue  Turned out that my PATH variable was longer than 2048 characters and so I was unable to add the Nodejs path to it  I had to remove the path of another program and add the Nodejs path   Close and reopen the cmd prompt and try to install Ionic again   This worked for me

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To elaborate on Breno s answer    For Windows 7 these steps worked for me    Open the Control Panel  Click the Start button  then click Control Panel  Click User Accounts Click Change my environment variables Select PATH and click the Edit    button At the end of the Variable value  add  C  Program Files nodejs Click Ok on the  Edit User Variable  window  then click Ok on the  Environment Variables  window Start a command prompt window  Start button  then type cmd into the search and hit enter  At the prompt  C   gt   type npm and hit enter  you should now see some help text  Usage  npm  lt command gt  etc   rather than  npm is not recognized       Now you can start using npm

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I had the same problem described by Ashu  but in addition to that  the PATH entry for nodejs was terminated by a backslash   C  Program Files nodejs    I also had to remove that final backslash in order to have it work

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You might have already received a response but this might help others since I experienced the same issue recently and this is what I did    Provided a path entry to powershell  For me the path was C  Windows System32 WindowsPowerShell v1 0 Then I opened cmd prompt with administrative privileges and copied this   powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command  iex   new-object net webclient  DownloadString  https   chocolatey org install ps1      amp  amp  SET PATH  PATH   ALLUSERSPROFILE  chocolatey bin   into the cmd prompt    Next  choco install nodejs Restart and everything worked fine  Try opening cmd without admin privileges and run npm -v Cheers

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for me adding path to PATH didn t do the trick  Run c  Program Files nodejs nodevars bat instead  it will do the job for you

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If you re getting this error through a service account like Visual Studio TFS Build controller service or any other background service  make sure you restart the service after installing npm as  the new PATH environment settings will not be picked up by those already running processes  I was getting same error through my build service but I had npm installed and running in the console

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Don t forget to reboot your computer after installing node  That one got me

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If you used ms build tools to install node the path is here   C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 BuildTools MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio NodeJs

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Just Download and Install Node js from here https   nodejs org en   If you run the downloaded file and install it  they will automatically configure for your system  You don t need any other configurations anymore  now you can use the npm command anywhere    If the Nodejs is successfully installed and still displays the message like this       npm  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file    Follow the steps below for Windows users     Go to My Computer Properties Click Advanced System Setting from the Left bar of a window  Now you have a System Properties window  Click Advanced Then  Click Environment Variable button Now you have Environment variable window  From System Variable  Select Path  Click Edit At the end of the Variable value  add  C  Program Files nodejs   Note  If you have installed nodejs on other drives then please act accordingly  Click Ok all the open dialogue box   Very important Note   Close your Command Prompt And Restart Again   It s very important because if you didn t restart your command prompt then changes will not be reflected    Now you can use the npm command anywhere

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If you are using VS Code  close VS code and open again   I tried closing Terminal and then opening new Terminal but it didn t work    Re-Starting VS Code works

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I installed nodejs following this AngularJS tutorial  the npm command did work when I open a new cmd window but not in the current one  So the fix was to close and open a new cmd window

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I ran into this issue as well  It turns out Windows doesn t enjoy single quotes on the command line  The culprit was one of my npm scripts  I changed the single quotes to escaped double quotes    npm -s run sass-build    to    npm -s run sass-build

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Well in my case doing testing via Mocha i tried everything just to realize i have to remove single quotes around my test case script tag inside package json   I am running mocha test case on all   test js files as can see below     package json   Before     scripts          test    mocha server      test js        test-watch    nodemon --exec  npm run test         After removing single quotes - npm run test       scripts          test    mocha server      test js        test-watch    nodemon --exec npm run test        Worked for me  just in case someone else also gets stuck on this

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follow just 2 steps  1 Download nodejs manually now go to that path like C  Program Files nodejs  2  Next add a new path like name   path and variable name  C  Program Files nodejs  click ok and close cmd prompt   reopen and just type npm in prompt

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I m updating this thread with a new answer because I ve found the solution to my miserable situation after not less than a week      For those still experiencing the error even though they have their path value set properly  check your pathext variable to have the value  default value in windows 7       COM  EXE  BAT  CMD  VBS  VBE  JS  JSE  WSF  WSH  MSC  Mine was to set only to    BAT and changing it solved the problem  I wonder why nobody brought this up      Hope this helps

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Had the same problem on Windows 8 1 64 bit  Turns out i get that problem if I start cmd by typing it in the path bar at the top of a folder window or when i shift right click in a folder window and then open command prompt from the list  When I run cmd using Run or Just from the cmd exe executable it works

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For windows8  right click my pc properties  then click environment variables user variable or System variables    new    put variable name and path   like this C  Program Files nodejs Then ok now open cmd and type npm it will work

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I faced the exact same issue and notice that after installing node js there was a new path entry in the user variable section for PATH with value --  c  User  AppData Roaming npm  Also the Path entry in the system variable is appended with --  C  Program Files nodejs  Now since user variable has preference over system you have two options to fix this  Either delete the path from user variable or correct the right path  C  Program Files nodejs   Restart CMD and it should work

[windows] 'npm' is not recognized as internal or external command, operable program or batch file

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