cmd prompt freezes until I hit CTRL+C, then continues as normal

Question

I'm having a weird issue.

I'm trying to set up a project I downloaded. The project is a web application with server components in Node.js and client components in Angular.

When I do things like npm install in command prompt, it just freezes at _, until I hit CTRL+C, when it resumes and everything executes succesfully.

This is really strange. Any ideas why this is happening?

Answer 1

I've had a number of freezes after an npm i that, even if I scorch the node_modules folder & npm cache (rmdir /S /Q node_modules and then npm cache clean --force), can still happen and that don't seem to happen at predictable times.

Here's one possible answer from the nodejs project's github issues pages, edited slightly to match what I see now in Win10:

^{though note that you don't have to actively highlight anything for it to stop; I think that's a red herring (or the install is "highlighting" something)}

This "Randomly" hang issue is causing by CMD when you trying to highlight inside of CMD. To resolve this issue:

1. right click title bar
2. select Defaults
3. unselect Quick Edit Mode from the Options tab
4. reopen CMD

I've given that a try with some success. I think the downside is limited to you having have to hit Alt-space, e, k to select text with the mouse like you did before Quick Edit Mode.