‘nmake’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Mar 27 2009

‘nmake’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Posted by alex in Errors at 1:48 AM

This means nmake is not installed on your Windows PC. To install you need to downloading, extract, and place two files into your $PATH. Follow the couple steps below to install nmake on your PC. In my case I installed nmake on Windows XP.

Download nmake: Visit the following link to download nmake.
Extract nmake:Run the Nmake15.exe file which will extract two files to the directory where it is located. These files will be nmake.exe and NMAKE.ERR.

Place nmake In PATH: Now move those two files into your path somewhere such as C:\WINDOWS\system32 or print out your path as shown below to place them in a different location.
Print PATH:

C:>PATH
PATH=C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\USB Display Adapter\;C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\bin;C:\ruby\bin;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.3\bin;C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72;C:\cygwin\bin;C:\Program Files\GNU\GnuPG\pub;C:\cygwin\nmap;c:\mspgcc\bin

Test nmake: Now type nmake from a DOS prompt and you should see output similar to the below.

C:>nmakeMicrosoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 1.50
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1988-94. All rights reserved.NMAKE : fatal error U1064: MAKEFILE not found and no target specified
Stop.

**NOTE** The Paths in the above article were previously incorrect because of a formatting issue. This has been resolved.

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Tags: exe, extract, fatal error, Makefile, nmake, nmake.err, nmake.exe, path, pc, reserved.NMAKE, windows, xp

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 1:48 AM and is filed under Errors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

42 Responses to “‘nmake’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”

Misganaw says:

December 24, 2010 at 2:49 AM

Thanks for your post this information, it helps me

[Reply]
alex Reply:
December 24th, 2010 at 4:57 PM
Hello Misganaw,

No problem at all. Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Neha says:

February 8, 2011 at 11:54 PM

Thanks this helped..

[Reply]
alex Reply:
February 9th, 2011 at 10:19 AM
Hello Neha,

No problem. Thanks for posting feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
shir says:

March 27, 2011 at 3:47 AM

Thank you so much!!! I was really lost till I ran into this post. I need it for Windows 7 but it was easy enough to make the changes required to make it work, once I read your explanation. :)

[Reply]
alex Reply:
March 27th, 2011 at 1:47 PM
Hello shir,

No problem at all. Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Jake Reply:
September 27th, 2011 at 2:29 AM
How did you get it to work with windows 7? I have tried many of those paths and it still gives the error.

[Reply]
alex Reply:
October 4th, 2011 at 4:50 AM
Hello Jake,

The Paths in the article were incorrect as they were all missing back slashes… I have just resolved the errors so make sure you were using the fill path and hopeful y that will resolve the issues you are having.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
venkat says:

June 18, 2011 at 2:56 AM

wow..
pro at work here..
!!! thnx sooo much!!!

[Reply]
alex Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:41 PM
Hello venkat,

No problem at all. Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Preethi says:

September 5, 2011 at 3:50 AM

Thanks
helped me a lot :)

[Reply]
alex Reply:
September 9th, 2011 at 3:19 PM
Hello Preethi,

No problem. Thanks for posting feedback.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Malar says:

September 20, 2011 at 2:10 AM

Can you help me with nmake for 64 bit?

[Reply]
alex Reply:
October 4th, 2011 at 1:36 AM
Hello Malar,

I believe I installed the 32bit version on a 64bit machine so the directions above should work. Unfortunately if they do not I don’t have the time for any testing on 64bit at the moment.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]
Pri says:

February 1, 2012 at 11:55 PM

I am not able to run nmake15.exe from the said website onto a 64bit system. Can you please help.

[Reply]
alex Reply:
April 23rd, 2012 at 3:17 AM
Hello Pri,

You might try running nmake15.exe in compatibility mode on your system which I am assuming is a Windows 7 machine. It will not work running it as a 64 bit application so if you run in 32 bit compatibility mode it should work properly.

Thanks.
alex

[Reply]