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

Question

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 bina

Answer 1

Just download the windows binary (NOT the msi installer) from here, unzip the file, then add the location of the node.exe file to system path. This means that after unzipping the downloaded binary, you get a folder, then you have to open that folder itself. That is the path you should add to system path.

To add to system path, do this, thanks to Abdel Raoof

Open Run with dialog (Win + R). Copy and paste this line in your command line

rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables.

In User variables for user_name (the top window) path of your environment variables dialog add the path to your unzipped node download. To check for successful installation

node -v

npm -v

Answer 2

The answer provided is too old now. Portable download for Node (including NPM) is available as a zip download and it word just out of the box. you just need to add the folder to the path.

Answer 3

The nodejs version of 6.11 LTS and later seems to be easier to install, because npm is already included.

1. Download the node.js LTS binary for Windows and extract it to your desired location
2. Add the path of the nodejs folder to the PATH environment variable: (Shortcut winkey+R and enter: rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables)
3. Open a new command window (winkey+R and type cmd)
4. Type node -v and npm -v to verify the installation

Answer 4

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.

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.).

Answer 5

As others have pointed out, npm is now included with the binary (.zip) node download. So installing node and npm without admin rights is straightforward, though you need to manually add the node directory to the PATH environment variable.

However, as of v8.11.4, the binary was including npm v5.6.1. Running npm install npm@latest -g complained about not being able to delete npm.cmd and npx.cmd. Moving those files out of the node directory fixes that, but then you can't simply run npm on the command line, because npm.cmd is no longer on the node path.

Trying @Anthony O's approach of downloading the latest npm .zip and installing from there didn't work either, as it was complaining about rimraf not being installed. It seemed like maybe the npm install script was assuming rimraf was installed globally.

What finally worked was changing to the node directory and specifying the full path to npm-cli.js from there:

node node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js install -g npm@latest

I see that the node v8.12.0 package that was just released now includes npm v6.4.1, so the above shouldn't be necessary for now.

Answer 6

Source: https://medium.com/@github.gkarthiks/how-to-install-nodejs-and-npm-in-non-admin-access-windows-machines-102fd461b54c:

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Step 1: Download the nodeJS.exe file from https://nodejs.org/en/download/ by clicking on All download options (example: https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.16.1/) and choose the right Windows architecture and download it.

Step 2: Choose a folder for nodeJS. For example, C:\ProgramData\Applications\nodejs and save the downloaded file under this folder.

Step 3: Add the nodeJS folder to the environment variable PATH by executing the below command in the cmd.exe, or using the User Interface. set PATH=C:\ProgramData\Applications\nodejs;%PATH% OBS! Remember to restart your computer after setting the environment variable. (Windows 10)

Step 4: Now download the stable version of npm from the below link by replacing the version. https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-{VERSION}.tgz For example for npm version 6.4.1, https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-6.4.1.tgz

Step 5: Now unzip the downloaded npm file anywhere and cd into package folder. (I used convert.io to convert tgz to zip for unzipping in Windows 10 https://convertio.co/tgz-converter/)

Step 6: Execute the following command in the cmd.exe

node bin/npm-cli.js install npm -gf

Step 7: Execute the following commands to verify the installation of nodeJS and npm.

node -v
npm -v