GPG Installation Guide for Windows.

To install GPG on your computer, first go to the GPG web site http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/download/index.html and download the Windows package. Look for the links that says, "GPG [some version number] compiled for Microsoft Windows."

You will need a program that reads Zip files to unpack the compressed file. Unzip the contents of the compressed file into a new folder called gnupg under your C: drive (c:\gnupg is the default location).

Next, edit your PATH environment variable so that Windows knows where to find the program. In Windows NT/2000/XP, you will find this under the Control Panel --> System Properties --> the Advanced tab --> Environment Variables --> System variables.

In Windows 95/98/ME, you will find it in the c:\autoexec.bat file. Values in this variable are separated by semicolons, so add ";c:\gnupg" to the end of the variable. For example, if your PATH variable reads as

c:\windows;c:\utils

then change it to

c:\windows;c:\utils;c:\gnupg

Now, if you're using Windows 95/98/ME, restart your computer; if you are using Windows NT/2000/XP, simply start a fresh command prompt, and close any command prompt windows you had open. Now you should be all set to go. Now try it out. At the command prompt, type

gpg --version

and you should see something like the following output:

gpg (GnuPG) 1.4.0

Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it

under certain conditions. See the file COPYING for details.

Home: c:/gnupg

Supported algorithms:

Pubkey: RSA, RSA-E, RSA-S, ELG-E, DSA, ELG

Cipher: 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH

Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160

Compress: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB

GPG Alternate Location Installation.

(Advanced)

It is possible to install GPG in a folder other than c:\gnupg. You might notice a text file in the GPG archive called gnupg-w32.reg. This is a set of Windows Registry keys that you can install, which will tell GPG where to find its companion files. Extract the entire archive to the folder where you want it installed instead of c:\gnupg. Edit gnupg-w32.reg with a text editor such as Notepad, change the three references to c:\\GnuPG to something else.

Note the double backslash being used as a folder separator instead of a single backslash.

Now tell Windows to execute gnupg-w32.reg either by double-clicking it in Explorer or right clicking it and choosing merge.

For example, suppose you wanted to install GPG to c:\utils\gpg. You would change gnupg-w32.reg to read like this:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GNUPG]

"HomeDir"="C:\\utils\\gpg"

"gpgProgram"="C:\\utils\\gpg\\gpg.exe"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mingw32\NLS]

"MODir"="C:\\utils\\gpg\\Locale"

and then you'd run

start c:\utils\gpg\gnupg-w32.reg

After that, edit your PATH environment variable accordingly (as explained in the previous section.) and you are now done with the GnuPG installation.

2005-01-25T12:06:46