# Rails installation does not work on windows

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-installation-does-not-work-on-windows/174159>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 21, 2009, 2:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-installation-does-not-work-on-windows/174159 "2009-08-21T14:27:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Arno)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-installation-does-not-work-on-windows/174159/1 "2009-08-21T14:27:06Z")

</div>

Hi,

i wanted to upgrade my rails installation that worked for quite a  
while. So i did the obvious

gem install rails

but the fcgi gem fails with an error message

Building native extensions. This could take a while…  
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)  
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

ruby extconf.rb install rails  
checking for fcgiapp.h… no  
checking for fastcgi/fcgiapp.h… no  
\*\*\* extconf.rb failed \*\*\*  
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of  
necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more  
details. You may need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:  
–with-opt-dir  
–without-opt-dir  
–with-opt-include  
–without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include  
–with-opt-lib  
–without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib  
–with-make-prog  
–srcdir=.  
–curdir  
–ruby=c:/ruby/bin/ruby  
–with-fcgi-dir  
–without-fcgi-dir  
–with-fcgi-include  
–without-fcgi-include=${fcgi-dir}/include  
–with-fcgi-lib  
–without-fcgi-lib=${fcgi-dir}/lib

Gem files will remain installed in c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/  
fcgi-0.8.7 for inspection.  
Results logged to c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fcgi-0.8.7/ext/fcgi/  
gem\_make.out

I did not find any hints on this in the forum except other users  
having the same issue. However no answer to their quesion.

My existing rails installation was broken afterwards. I tries a clean  
install (Ruby from scratch, Rails from scratch) same error. Now Rails  
is out of order.

How can I fix this ? I have several infrastructure components build  
with Rails running on Windows so I need a working rails environment ?

Thanks for any support,  
Arno

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Arno)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 2:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-installation-does-not-work-on-windows/174159/2 "2009-08-21T14:31:58Z")

</div>

try to use this command

gem update --system

then try to execute

gem install rails

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Arno](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Arno)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-installation-does-not-work-on-windows/174159/3 "2009-08-21T16:12:30Z")

</div>

This helped. Thanks a lot.

On Aug 21, 2:31 pm, Wap A. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)