Error Installing laravel-elixir on windows: npm ERR! EEXIST, open '\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\837c67b9-adable-s tream-1-0-33-package-tgz.lock' - node.js

Question

I have a fresh installation of laravel 5.1. I followed these steps to Set up Elixir, Bootstrap, Font-awesome etc. When I run npm install it throws an error. I also tried using npm install --no-bin-links as the laravel elixir documentation suggests.
$ npm install --no-bin-links
npm WARN optional dep failed, continuing fsevents#0.3.8
npm WARN optional dep failed, continuing fsevents#0.3.8
> node-sass#3.2.0 install c:\Users\user\PhpstormProjects\my_project\node_modules\laravel-elixir\node_modules\gulp-sass\node_modules\node-sass
> node scripts/install.js
Binary downloaded and installed at c:\Users\user\PhpstormProjects\my_project\node_modules\laravel-elixir\node_modules\gulp-sass\node_modules\node-sass\vendor\win32-x64-11\binding.node
> node-sass#3.2.0 postinstall c:\Users\user\PhpstormProjects\my_project\node_modules\laravel-elixir\node_modules\gulp-sass\node_modules\node-sass
> node scripts/build.js
` c:\Users\user\PhpstormProjects\my_project\node_modules\laravel-elixir\node_modules\gulp-sass\node_modules\node-sass\vendor\win32-x64-11\binding.node ` exists.
testing binary.
Binary is fine; exiting.
npm ERR! EEXIST, open 'C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\837c67b9-adable-stream-1-0-33-package-tgz.lock'
File exists: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\837c67b9-adable-stream-1-0-33-package-tgz.lock
Move it away, and try again.
npm ERR! System Windows_NT 6.1.7600
npm ERR! command "c:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe" "c:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "install" "--no-bin-links"
npm ERR! cwd c:\Users\user\PhpstormProjects\my_project
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.32
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.28
npm ERR! path C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\837c67b9-adable-stream-1-0-33-package-tgz.lock
npm ERR! code EEXIST
npm ERR! errno 47
npm ERR! not ok code 0
I searched for the file (that exists) in the npm-cache directory and found there are no such file. But, when I execute the npm command it is created along with hundreds of LOCK file. I tried to delete the file during the installation process (which is quite tricky and seems impossible, because there are a lot of files created and removed simultaneously), which didn't help much. The error is not always the same. Most of the time it says 837c67b9-adable-stream-1-0-
33-package-tgz.lock file exists, some times it's just some other LOCK file.
I also tried updating npm to the latest release: npm -g install npm#latest (sauce)

Answer 1

What helped me on Win 8.1:
Install newest version of Python (3.5 at the moment) and make sure it's on your path (open some command line tool like power shell and enter 'py --version').
npm cache clear
In the laravel installation folder run: npm install --no-bin-links
I was also running power shell as an administrator when issuing the commands, but I'm not sure it matters (won't hurt in this case though).

Answer 2

I faced the same problem and run the terminal as administrator and it solved the problem.
I am not sure about you but issue but now the gulp is working :)