Trouble setting up Zombie JS on Windows 7 - any advice?

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

**Hey everyone, I’m stuck trying to get Zombie JS working on my Windows 7 machine. Could use some help!

I’ve tried a bunch of things already:

  1. Installed Node.js from the official website
  2. Got NPM package manager
  3. Installed Python 2.7, Visual Studio 2010, and Cygwin (heard these might be needed)
  4. Tried to install Zombie using npm, but it keeps failing on the contextify module

When I run npm install zombie, I get a bunch of errors. The main one seems to be about node-waf not working right.

I know Zombie’s docs mention using Cygwin, but that info looks old. Some places say to use Visual Studio instead. I’m confused about which way to go.

Has anyone got Zombie JS running smoothly on Windows 7? What’s the secret? Do I need to build Node.js from source?

Any tips would be awesome. Thanks!**

2

yo noah, i had similar issues. try using nvm to switch to node 0.12 and check your PATH for python n visual studio. if it still fails, docker might help run linux containers. good luck!

3

I’ve had success running Zombie JS on Windows 7, but it can be tricky. The key for me was using Node.js version 0.12 or earlier, as newer versions often have compatibility issues with Zombie on Windows. Also, make sure you’re using the 32-bit version of Node, not 64-bit.

For the contextify module problem, try installing the Windows SDK 7.1 and .NET Framework 4.0. Then set the following environment variables before running npm install:

SET GYP_MSVS_VERSION=2010
SET PYTHON=C:\Python27\python.exe

If that doesn’t work, you might need to manually compile contextify. It’s a bit involved, but there are guides online. Alternatively, consider using a virtual machine with Linux to run Zombie if you keep hitting roadblocks on Windows.

4

I feel your pain, Noah. Windows can be a real headache for setting up certain dev tools. In my experience, the easiest workaround for Zombie JS on Windows 7 is to use a virtual machine running Ubuntu. It’s a bit of extra setup, but it saves so much trouble down the line.

I wasted days trying to get all the dependencies working correctly on Windows before I switched to this method. With a VM, you can just follow the standard Linux install instructions for Zombie, and everything usually works smoothly right out of the box.

If you absolutely need to stick with Windows, you might want to look into using a headless browser alternative that has better Windows support, like Puppeteer. It’s not a perfect substitute, but it can handle a lot of the same use cases as Zombie without the Windows compatibility nightmares.

Hope this helps point you in a useful direction. Good luck with your project!