Error: Cannot find module 'shrink-ray'

After using the amazing angular-fullstack-generator though Yeoman, I followed the setup instructions, and when I came to running npm start or gulp serve I got the following error:

Error: Cannot find module 'shrink-ray'

Seemed pretty self-explanitory, so I ran npm install shrink-ray, and doing so gave me the following error:

node-pre-gyp ERR! Tried to download(403): https://node-zopfli.s3.amazonaws.com/Releas
e/zopfli-v1.4.0-node-v48-win32-x64.tar.gz                                            
node-pre-gyp ERR! Pre-built binaries not found for node-zopfli@1.4.0 and node@6.9.2 (
node-v48 ABI) (falling back to source compile with node-gyp)                         
Building the projects in this solution one at a time. To enable parallel build, pleas
e add the "/m" switch.                                                               
MSBUILD : error MSB3428: Could not load the Visual C++ component "VCBuild.exe". To f 
ix this, 1) install the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK, 2) install Microsoft Visual Studio 2 
005 or 3) add the location of the component to the system path if it is installed el 
sewhere.  [C:\Users\alicia.sykes\Dropbox\Coding\Angular\team-awesome\node_modules\no 
de-zopfli\build\binding.sln]       

Again, this error looked pretty self-explanatory, so I followed the steps it suggested - but it didn't work. The same error always returned, preventing me from installing shrink-ray.

After many hours of Googling, it looked like a combination of issues between:

• node-gyp
• The NPM and node version installed
• C++ build tools (why, I have no idea)
• Having the Python environmental variable pointing to the correct installation location of either Python 2.7 or 3.1

Some of these factors modified the error message - but none were the solution.

via Lissy