Problem with installing TeX Live under Windows 8

Question

I am new to LaTeX and wanted to install the required "programs". But when I came to installing TeX Live, there seemed to be a problem:

Can't spawn "cmd.exe": No such file or directory at (directory)

I have no idea what to do, I simply just downloaded the zipped file from the internet, unzipped it at a random location and tried to run it from cmd.

My PC is recently formatted with Windows 8 and I haven't installed anything with LaTeX before on it. Hope someone can help.

Have you tried MikTeX, it is not texlive but usually works good on windows systems? — Martin H, Nov 19 '12 at 19:25
Interesting links: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/20036/what-are-the-advantages-of-tex-live-over-miktex and http://blog.miktex.org/post/2011/09/15/MiKTeX-on-Windows-8.aspx — doncherry, Nov 19 '12 at 20:24

score 8 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 07 '15 at 00:29

8

For me this was also a problem with the PATH-variable.

Go to environmental variables, search for PATH and add at the end: ;C:\Windows\system32. The semicolon is important as it separates the entries.

You can test it by typing cmd into the console. If it works (and you had the same problem like me), tlmgr may now update properly.

Restart the console after changing environmental variables.

Thanks a lot. That was my problem, too. I added ";C:\Windows\system32" at the end of the PATH environmental variable - and the installation worked out fine. You amde my day! :-)

edited Sep 07 '15 at 00:29

Community

1

answered Nov 19 '13 at 21:25

burny

267
2
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cool! thank you! This also solved my problem. – LCFactorization Jan 25 '16 at 08:58

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 02 '12 at 12:08

I am running TeXLive on Windows 8 x64 and there are no compatibility issues that I can see. Just to double check your procedure:

Download install-tl.zip for Windows from CTAN.
Extract the ZIP to a destination of your choice, preferably with 7-zip. The extracted folder has 49.9 MB, 2,973 files and 407 folders on my system.
Run install-tl.bat by simply double clicking on it.

I did not have to do anything else, as such the installation for me is identical to previous issues. If this does not work try:

Rightclick on install-tl.bat
Select Run as Administrator

Hope that helps, but I don't see why there should be any issues.

I’m installing texlive on Windows 7. Running install-t1.bat didn’t work for me (some error on cmd prompt). However, I had more success with running the install-t1-advanced.bat. The installer has a GUI interface showing detail installation process. Thanks for your helpful post. — EnglishLearner, Apr 12 '13 at 19:15

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 28 '13 at 22:50

I had the same problem, seems that the problem is related to the environmental variables in Windows 8. I changed the variable "PATHEXT" (it holds the sequence that Windows looks for executables in) from ".COM;.EXE;.BAT;...." to ".EXE;.BAT;.COM"...., this fixed the problem for me. Environmental variables are found under

Controlpanel>System and security>System>Change settings>Advanced>Environmental variables

(translated from danish).

Happy TeXing!

Problem with installing TeX Live under Windows 8

3 Answers3

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