Setting up Node.js & NPM on a machine without administrative privileges and behind a corporate proxy

May 5, 2017 / Kannan / 0 Comments

Recently I was trying to setup a development machine at our office and realized few issues.

  1. The machine didn’t have administrative privileges
  2. It was located behind the corporate proxy
  3. It uses Windows 10 as primary OS

So how to proceed? Following is what I did.

[Update: Now node.js includes npm, so I would suggest to download only node.]

Downloading Node.js & NPM

  1. Download the Node.js binary instead of installer from the below URLs

Node.js binary (32bit or 64 bit): https://nodejs.org/en/download/

  1. Download NPM binary release from the url below

NPM Release: https://github.com/npm/npm/releases

  1. Extract Node.js to D:\Development\Node
  2. Extract NPM to D:\Development\NPM

Set up environment

Every time the development environment is booted do the following

  1. Start a command prompt and set the following path
set PATH=%PATH%;D:\Development\Node;D:\Development\Node\node_modules\npm\bin;
  1. Check the Node version by typing the following
node -v
  1. Check the NPM version by typing the following
npm -v

If you get version numbers for both then both are working.

  1. Now set proxy so that NPM can download modules by running the following
set http_proxy=http://replace-with-your-organization-proxy-url:optional-port-number
set https_proxy=https://replace-with-your-organization-proxy-url:optional-port-number
npm config set strict-ssl false
npm config set proxy http://replace-with-your-organization-proxy-url:optional-port-number
npm config set https-proxy https://replace-with-your-organization-proxy-url:optional-port-number

Now the environment is set up.
Do remember, once the console is closed, all the above settings are lost and needs to be run again, just follow the section “Set up environment” again or do the following.

You can set up the “path” variable without administrator privileges in Windows by doing the following.

  1. From Windows’s Start Menu, open Control Panel.
  2. In Control Panel open “User Accounts”.
  3. In ‘User Accounts” open “Change my environment variables”.
  4. This will open the user’s “Environment Variables” window.
  5. Select the row with entry “Path”.
  6. Click “Edit” button.
  7. In the “Variable value:” text box, append the path of your executable location, which in this case is “D:\Development\Node;D:\Development\Node\node_modules\npm\bin;“
  8. Click OK
  9. Open a new terminal or console
  10. Type “node -v” to check if node is working fine.
  11. type “npm -v” to check if npm is working fine.

Source URLs:
http://abdelraoof.com/blog/2014/11/11/install-nodejs-without-admin-rights
http://www.kscodes.com/misc/how-to-set-path-in-windows-without-admin-rights/