TeX Live on Windows

The same TeX Live installer is used for Windows as for other platforms, so the general documentation applies. On Windows, the installer is invoked with the command install-tl-windows, rather than just install-tl.

When successful, the installer does some special things on Windows:

• Adds a TeX Live submenu with, among others, an entry for TeXworks, an editor for composing TeX documents, and entries for PostScript- and dvi viewers.
• Adds the directory of TeX Live Windows binaries to the search path:
  • if it detects another TeX in the search path already, the new TL directory is added at the beginning of the path;
  • otherwise, the new binary directory is added at the end of the path.

If you want to share a TeX Live installation among several Windows machines, see the w32client information.

Perl on Windows

On Windows, TL includes a minimal Perl setup. It is sufficient for running the TL infrastructure programs written in Perl, such as the installer and tlmgr, but it is not sufficient to run every Perl script. Scripts that come as part of TeX packages usually require additional modules, and it is not feasible to satisfy all those dependencies—especially since the particular version of Windows can change what's needed.

Therefore, if you need to run other Perl scripts and the included Perl does not have all the modules, you need to install a full Perl distribution.

Security

It is especially important to be careful when processing untrusted documents on Windows, because in general Windows finds programs in the current directory before anything else, regardless of the search path. This opens up a wide variety of possible attacks.

Thus, we recommend checking for suspicious files in the current directory, especially executables (binaries or scripts). Ordinarily they should not be present, and definitely should not normally be created by merely processing a document.

Although the core TeX programs are robust, to the best of our knowledge, third-party programs may not reach the same level. For maximum safety, we recommend using a new subdirectory for processing.

Multiple TeX distributions

Only one TeX distribution can be active at a time, because all the TeX distributions use the search path to find their programs. This means that to switch from one TeX to another, e.g., between TeX Live and MiKTeX if you have both installed, you must (at least) change the search path.

However, the individual shortcuts – including a command prompt – have a modified searchpath with TeX Live in front, so as long as you use TeX Live via the menu, you should be fine.

Administrator privileges on Vista and Windows 7

Administrator privileges are not automatic even when you run as administrator. So if you want to install for all users, you need to right-click install-tl-windows.bat and select ‘Run as administrator’. The same is needed when running tlmgr (TeX Live Package Manager).

Troubleshooting

The sad truth is that in many cases the cause of the failure is never found, but here are some things you can try:

• Virus scanners. Please disable them during installation. They may lock directories for minutes at a time, causing the installation to fail.
• Get more details. You may get a popup message ‘Perl has stopped working’. The popup message probably has a button for showing details. Or you can run the installer from the command-line in verbose mode (-v):

  <path>/install-tl-windows -v
  

• Text mode. If the popup message implicates a module Tk then try running the installer in text mode (also from a command prompt):

  <path>/install-tl-windows -v -gui text
  

• Advanced mode. Sometimes install-tl-advanced mysteriously succeeds where install-tl-windows failed.
• Smaller installation. Try install-tl-advanced[.bat] and pick a smaller scheme. You can always add more afterwards with TeX Live Manager.
• Perl. There is at least one report where replacing the included Perl under <installer path>/tlpkg/tlperl with a copy of an already-installed Perl solved the problem.