“npm faq” fails on Windows 7 (“spawn ENOENT” error

I have installed node.js on Windows 7 with their latest installer. It seemed to work, I can call npm and node from the console (either cmd or PowerShell), but I keep getting errors.

There are a lot of questions here about node.js on windows, but they all mention some specific piece of code. I'm getting the "spawn ENOENT" with a lot of simple commands, for instance yo, if I then pick "update generators" :

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
              ^
Error: spawn ENOENT
    at errnoException (child_process.js:988:11)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:779:34)

even npm faq fails :

PS E:\www\something> npm faq
npm ERR! Error: spawn ENOENT
npm ERR!     at errnoException (child_process.js:988:11)
npm ERR!     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:779:34)
npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this *entire* log,
npm ERR! including the npm and node versions, at:
npm ERR!     <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>

It seems that the problem is that node uses unix command names like dir, which do not exist on Windows. Some blog posts mention using Cygwin, but mostly for building node.js, not for calling it. The official nodejs website doesn't mention that cygwin is a prerequisite, either.

Here's the npm-debug.log :

0 info it worked if it ends with ok
1 verbose cli [ 'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\\\node.exe',
1 verbose cli   'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js',
1 verbose cli   'faq' ]
2 info using npm@1.3.24
3 info using node@v0.10.25
4 verbose node symlink C:\Program Files\nodejs\\node.exe
5 error Error: spawn ENOENT
5 error     at errnoException (child_process.js:988:11)
5 error     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:779:34)
6 error If you need help, you may report this *entire* log,
6 error including the npm and node versions, at:
6 error     <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>
7 error System Windows_NT 6.1.7601
8 error command "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\\\node.exe" "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "faq"
9 error cwd E:\
10 error node -v v0.10.25
11 error npm -v 1.3.24
12 error syscall spawn
13 error code ENOENT
14 error errno ENOENT
15 verbose exit [ 1, true ]

Make sure that you have c:\Windows\System32 on your 'Path' System Variable. I was having this exact problem and this was the fix I needed. I must have taken it out in error sometime in the past.