NVM for Windows not working?

Question

I just installed NVM for Windows, but it doesn't seem to be working:

Any ideas?

Answer 1

First examine your actual "C:\Program Files\nodejs" directory. Most of us already have a "nodejs" directory from a prior install, before we decided (or were told) to install nvm.

In the end, this "C:\Program Files\nodejs" directory will actually be a shortcut to where nvm manages the versions it installs (see C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\nvm). It seems that nvm is simply switching the shortcut, when we call "nvm use ...".

Ok, so here is what I did to fix the situation where "nvm use ..." was not taking effect.

1. Delete/remove/uninstall the version of node in your "C:\Program Files\nodejs" directory. To the point where there is no more "nodejs" directory at all.
2. Delete the existence of nvm (C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\nvm), basically, manually delete the nvm dir.
3. Download your desired version of nvm (https://github.com/coreybutler/nvm-windows/releases)
4. Open a CMD prompt (run as administrator), and install the downloaded version of nvm, nvm-setup.exe, from within this CMD command prompt.
5. From within the admin level command prompt, run "nvm install 7.2.1", or whatever node version you want to install. Probably you will be installing multiple versions, so repeat as needed.
6. Now do the usual "nvm use ...", "nvm list", etc...

I dont know if this is the best way, but it worked for me...