How to install MongoDB for development in Windows

Visit the MongoDB Download Center by clicking on the following link: https://www.mongodb.com/download-center

Select the ‘Community Server’ option, make sure Windows is selected as your operating system and click the download button.

After the download finishes, run the MongoDB .msi installation file (press ‘Run’ when the Window security dialog pops up)

1) Press the ‘Next’ button

2) Tick the ‘I accept the terms in the License Agreement’ checkbox (after reading the license agreement carefully, of course)

3) Select the ‘Custom’ button so we can change the install folder location

4) Click ‘Browse…’ on the bottom right

5) Now type C:\MongoDB\ in the ‘Folder name’ input field and press ‘OK’

6) Check if everything looks good and then press ‘Next’

7) Untick the ‘Install MongoD as a Service’, since we will be starting our database manually.

8) Untick ‘Install MongoDB Compass’ as shown in the screenshot and click ‘Next’ again

9) Finally, click the ‘Install’ button (Press ‘Yes’ on the User Account Control dialog from Windows)

10) Press the ‘Finish’ button to complete the installation process

UPDATE (JULY 2022) It looks like MongoDB version 6 doesn't include mongo.exe (the classic mongo shell) in the installation folder. Instead, you should install the MongoDB Shell (mongosh) with the MSI installer for Windows (click here for instructions - make sure to choose the Windows MSI installer from the download page, in the Platform/Package menu), and then you would use the mongosh command (instead of the mongo command) to start the shell. Otherwise, instead of installing the new MongoDB version, if you choose to download and install the same MongoDB version as seen in this tutorial above, then you would ensure everything works the same as in the video.

11) First thing we will do is create the data folder for MongoDB.

Start Windows Powershell (press the Windows Start button and type ‘powershell’ to find the shortcut) and type the following command:

New-Item -ItemType directory -Path C:\data\db

Alternatively, you can manually create these folder by going into your C:\ drive with the file explorer, then create a new folder called ‘data’

Go into the newly created folder called ‘data’ and create a new folder inside of it, called ‘db’

12) To easily start our mongod server, we will create a Windows batch script file (.bat) which will serve as a shortcut for us.

Open a new file in your code editor and paste in the following:

@echo off
cd "C:\mongodb\bin"
start mongod.exe
exit

Then, press Save (Ctrl+S), navigate to your desktop and save the file as ‘StartMongod.bat’

If your version of MongoDB still includes mongo.exe, then you could create another .bat file where you repeat the same code but write start mongo.exe (instead of mongod.exe) and then save it as a second .bat file that you can use to start the mongo shell. If your MongoDB version does not include mongo.exe, then see the red highlighted note in step 10 of this tutorial.

13) Now you will be able to start your mongod database server by double-clicking the StartMongod.bat file on your Desktop!