npm ERR! Refusing to delete / code EEXIST

I'm just running a simple npm install and i get this error.

npm ERR! path /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! Refusing to delete /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which: is outside /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/which and not a link
npm ERR! File exists: /Users/jasonazoulay/Desktop/fabrick.io/delegation/node_modules/@angular/cli/node_modules/webpack/node_modules/yargs/node_modules/os-locale/node_modules/execa/node_modules/cross-spawn/node_modules/.bin/which
npm ERR! Move it away, and try again

This is the first time I get this error and I don't know what to do.

Steps

1. Delete the node_modules directory completely.
2. Run npm install again.

This should help.

This was how I solved mine after 'googling' around...

• Navigate to the directory your node was installed in
• rename your npm.cmd and npm files
• Try run the installation again
• If successful..delete the files you renamed earlier npm and npm.cmd
• if not, :( :(

The cli commands here...in case you don't want to be renaming and stuffs

cd %ProgramFiles%\nodejs
ren npm.cmd npm2.cmd
ren npm npm2 
npm2 install npm@latest -g

del npm2
del npm2.cmd

Rolf-schmidiger

Try running npm update -g npm then run npm i again.
If that doesn't work maybe npm cache clean helps.

If that doesn't work either you should consider removing the node_modules folder in your application and running npm i again.
If you still have no luck, I suggest removing the package-lock.json and the node_modules folder before running npm i.

I got this problem on Linux (npm is the current latest 5.6.0), because I created a tgz archive, and I needed to --dereference some symlinks (see man tar) when creating a tgz archive (which was them copied to VM for testing). This way a lot of symlinks in node_modules/.bin also became regular files. npm says in the error message, .e.g.

npm ERR! Refusing to delete /path/to/node_modules/.bin/jest: is outside /path/to/node_modules/jest and not a link

For windows users (specific to windows 10) this must solve the problem.

Goto this folder:

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\

delete or rename the npm and npm-cache folders.

This has fixed my problem in Windows.