Common Issues
There are a couple of common issues folks run into. I try to fix them/accept PR's when possible, but there are a few things I've simply held off on. Why? I'm building a new version that's cross-platform compatible, and I'm trying to get infrastructure setup for things like auto-update.
In the meantime, here are some common issues and workarounds:
This issue should be resolved as of version 1.1.8.
If you are working with an older version...
Some environments aren't picking up on space-escaping. If you're having problems with Windows recognizing NVM4W, try installing it on a path with no spaces, like C:\nvm. The same situation is relevant for the symlink path, so you may want to use something other than C:\Program Files\nodejs for the symlink root.
Windows requires elevated administrative privileges to perform specific functions or use special directories. For example, administrative privileges are required to write to anything in C:\Program Files. Elevated permissions are required to use Windows mklink command, which is responsible for the nvm use command.
There is no way around this, because it's a security feature of the operating system. Every program has to deal with this. Remember that NVM4W is basically an installer, so it needs installer-like permissions.
Several people have complained about this, and I'm sorry... but I'm not the guy to talk to about that. Your best bet is to reach out to Microsoft.
The installer attempts to take over any existing installations of Node, but the process can be more complex than it appears on the surface. Depending on which version of Windows you have and how your desktop is setup, there can be issues with modifying a path in the registry for an application you don't control, user accounts associated with an existing app, roaming profiles, etc.
I only have a couple of versions of Windows to test on, but it's far from the complete Microsoft Windows catalog. The one solution that seems to always work is uninstalling Node before installing NVM4W.
Yarn is an npm package. npm install -g yarn will install it. Remember, yarn is not officially released with Node.js, so this will need to be repeated for each new installation of Node.js.
Per issue #417, some shells do not respect UAC prompts (i.e. requesting administrator permissions). NVM for Windows cannot control how terminals work, and due to the sheer number of custom terminals available (mingw, cmder, ConEmu, cygwin, hyper, etc). Only official Windows terminals are support (CMD and PowerShell). Bash for Windows support may come in the future.
If you are using a special terminal that does not respect UAC requests, you may see errors like this:
