Error: ENOENT... When Installing Socket.io using NPM

The Problem

When installing Socket.io on Node.js (Windows) via the following NPM command:

npm install socket.io

You may receive the following error:

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

Mmmm, ambiguous error messages.

The Solution

Apparently this is a bug in the currently current version of Node.js (v0.10.32) and/or NPM (v1.4.28). The solution is straightforward and just requires creating the above noted “npm” folder within AppData. I’m sure you can figure this out, but copy-pasting is much more fun:

mkdir %APPDATA%\npm

That’s it. You should now be able to execute the NPM command to install Socket.io without any errors. Note you will probably need to run this command with administrative privileges. I didn’t need to run my command line as an Administrator, but I’ve read that you may have to (yes, you, specifically; the Google referred to you by name.)