Installing Metasploit Framework on Windows

Now that we have learned how to install Metasploit Framework on *nix-based systems, let's take a quick look at how to install Metasploit Framework on a Windows environment:

1. First, we need to download the Nightly installer for Windows from the following URL:

https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit-framework/wiki/Nightly-Installers

Upon entering this URL, you should see the following output:

2. Once the download is complete, we can install it by double-clicking the MSI file. A new window will open, as shown in the following screenshot.
3. We need to follow the standard installation steps (Next, Next, I Agree, and then Install) to install Metasploit on Windows:

After the installation is complete, we still won't be able to run Metasploit from the command prompt, as shown in the following screenshot. This is because the path variable hasn't been set, so the system doesn't know where to look for the msfconsole binary when the command is executed:

4. Let's locate the msfconsole binary. In our case, it can be found here:

C:\metasploit-framework\bin

The output of the preceding command can be seen in the following screenshot:

5. Now, we need to add this directory to our path by typing the following command:

set PATH=%PATH%;C:\metasploit-framework\bin

This can be seen in the following screenshot:

Now that the path variable has been set, we will be able to launch Metasploit from Command Prompt:

Running the aforementioned command will start up Metasploit and its console. Now that we have gained access to the MSF console, let's start looking at the basics of Metasploit Framework.