This afternoon I installed Node.js version 0.10.30 (the most recent according to http://nodejs.org/) on a new Windows box. Unfortunately, after installing, using npm was, uhhh, not good:

C:\Users\tyler> npm
Error: ENOENT, stat 'C:\Users\tyler\AppData\Roaming\npm'

Not exactly a great experience. And that error message? Useless. To me, anyway. I’m sure ENOENT means something useful to someone.¹

Fortunately, a quick search revealed this page on Stack Overflow, where the ‘fix’ is outlined: you just need to manually create the npm folder at the path in the error message:

C:\Users\tylerbu> mkdir C:\Users\tylerbu\AppData\Roaming\npm


Directory: C:\Users\tylerbu\AppData\Roaming


Mode				LastWriteTime		Length		Name
----				-------------		------		----
d----				8/15/2014			1:25 PM		npm

After that, things were golden:

C:\Users\tylerbu> npm install grunt
[email protected] node_modules\grunt
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected] ([email protected])
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected]
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
├── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])
└── [email protected] ([email protected], [email protected])