NPM - ENOENT syscall spawn bash (this is related to npm not being able to find a file)

Question

Overview

I am attempting to troubleshoot why I can't run scripts defined in a package.json file via npm run command. Every script command returns the same error message:

npm ERR! code ENOENT
npm ERR! syscall spawn bash
npm ERR! path C:\Temp\test4
npm ERR! errno -4058
npm ERR! enoent spawn bash ENOENT
npm ERR! enoent This is related to npm not being able to find a file.
npm ERR! enoent

Minimal Repro Steps

I installed NodeJS 18.12.1 x64 MSI from the Node Download Page on my Windows 11 machine.

I created an empty directory (called test4 in my example here) with a single file called package.json with the following content:

{
  "scripts": {
    "hello": "echo 'Hello World'"
  }
}

I opened a PowerShell window as administrator inside the same folder as the package.json file listed above.

Running npm run hello generates the error message above.

Verbose/Silly Logging Results

One troubleshooting techniques I used was to enable silly logging to log as many details as possible. The results of that command (npm run hello -ddd) are below:

Expected Behavior

I had a colleague attempt the same step and he was able to get the results I anticipated:

Things I Have Already Tried

• Completely uninstalling NodeJs/NPM following this StackOverflow answer

• Installing different version of NodeJS/NPM. (I tried 2/3 different versions)

• Running npm install on my simplistic package.json file above and on a 'real' package.json file from one of my projects. Both projects install successfully.

• Reviewed the log file mentioned in the error message referring to the AppData folder. (It's the same content as the verbose error screenshot I provided above)

Answer 1

Run npm config list and check if script-shell is set:

In my case, it was configured to use bash, which is why the error was happening. To solve this, simply remove the configuration setting by running npm config delete script-shell

As to why/how this got set, I am unsure.