Windows Command Line

GCC is not recognized as internal or external command

If you have installed MinGW tools on your system and are trying to run gcc from command prompt, you might get this error – 'gcc' is not recognized as an internal or external command. This post explains how we can fix this problem once for all.

The first step is to check what all you have in your PATH environment variable. Run set path and verify this.

c:\>set path
Path=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_79\bin;C:\Program Files (x8
6)\Skype\Phone\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Quarantine\;C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\
Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;c:\Program F
iles\Java\jdk1.7.0_79\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Quarantine\;c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox"

If you have such a long path like in my case, use findstr to quickly check if it has mingw anywhere in the string.

c:\>set path | findstr /I /C:"mingw"
c:\>

Now this tells me that I have not added MinGW installation folder yet to my path. I would need to add it then. The next step explains how to do this.
The path values for system or any user can be edited in GUI. There are multiple ways to open the window where you can edit it. What I usually do is press the windows button and start typing ‘environment..’ which searches all files/programs with this name. You would see couple of links in the search results as shown below.
Select ‘Edit system environment variables’. Both of them take you to the same window, but the system one allows you to edit system variables.
In system variables, find the ‘PATH’ environment variable and then edit it to add MinGW path. You need to add ‘;’ at the end of the existing value and then enter MinGW path.

After doing the above steps, open a new command prompt and run gcc to compile a C program.

c:\>type helloWindows.c
#include 
int main() {
        printf("Hello Windows");
}
c:>
c:\>gcc -o HelloWindows.exe helloWindows.c
c:\> HelloWindows.exe
Hello Windows

That completes the setup. Before I end the post, reiterating couple of important points.
1. Add path to system environment variable, not user environment variable.
2. Open a new command window after setting PATH.

Let us know if this post helped you to fix the problem. If you still have issues, please add to the comments the error you are getting into. We would do our best to reply and help you fix the problem.

Srini

Next How to Schedule Automatic Shutdown »

Previous « How to open command prompt

View Comments

Graham Ansell says:

May 22, 2016 at 1:59 pm

Good Stuff here, could be useful for future reference, thanks for posting
udit says:

June 26, 2016 at 3:01 pm

plz help me to how can i play a .mp3 file from turbo c compiler when i execute it in turbo c
.also i know about sound function but that function works on some frequency range ..but i want the song should get imported and is played when i press CTRL+f9.
And i have also used System calls to do this but not suceeding.
my system configuration is:-
32- bit operating system
Neha says:

September 8, 2017 at 6:06 pm

Thank you so much for this post. Helped a lot. Especially the last two points.
Emirali caferzade says:

September 29, 2017 at 4:30 pm

Thank you very much for this post. It solved my problem.
Emirali
Nada says:

January 12, 2018 at 9:40 pm

I can not edit system variables. I can't select the button edit.
Fatih says:

January 30, 2018 at 2:59 pm

I can see MinGW in the path but it still says not recognized! I double checked my path and it is 100 % correct. What could the issue be?
- Josh says:
  
  August 27, 2018 at 3:07 pm
  
  Same problem. Have the path added to system level, user level and mingw copied to a directory path with no spaces in it (programfiles 86 has a space and sometimes spaces in paths are a problem).
- stan says:
  
  April 20, 2021 at 6:35 am
  
  same problem
Amol Gokhale says:

April 7, 2018 at 9:38 pm

This fixed it right up make sure not to mix up user and enviornment variables.
John Kodjian says:

April 28, 2018 at 5:32 pm

I'm getting gcc no such file or directory. why?
- ARIK HASSAN says:
  
  April 9, 2021 at 11:30 pm
  
  I get the same output, let me know if you figure out why, thanks, and all the best
Aswani says:

July 28, 2018 at 4:21 am

I can see MinGW in the path but it still says not recognized! I double checked my path and it is 100 % correct. What could the issue be?
- Sonali says:
  
  February 25, 2019 at 7:48 pm
  
  Maybe the mingw is installed in another drive or folder, so ,if you can add it in current folder, error may not be there. Hope it helps.
- maxim says:
  
  December 10, 2024 at 11:10 am
  
  I had this problem too when I was looking through the mingw files I noticed theres nothing in the bin directiory. I looked in the other folders and found a bin folder with the correct contents it was called ucrt64\bin.
  
  For me it works now
Ashish Chandra says:

August 18, 2018 at 2:01 pm

sir, it worked. But still having problem while running c++ program. I guess there is different command for c++. Please help me.