Installing Metasploit on Microsoft Windows

Windows users have two options for using the Metasploit Framework.

Metasploit Windows Installer

The easiest way to way to use the framework on Windows is to download the installer from the  Framework Website. The installer includes a native version of the Ruby interpreter, along with a number of useful utilities (vncviewer, putty, nc, etc). Once the installer completes, access the Metasploit 3 icon from the Start Menu (inside the Metasploit 3 folder). This will launch a console window, which starts up the WEBrick web server and the msfweb interface. To use Metasploit, start a supported browser (IE 6.0, Firefox 1.5+, Opera 9) and browse to  http://127.0.0.1:55555/. Due to limitations of the native windows Ruby interpreter, the msfconsole and msfcli interfaces are not available.

Metasploit Framework on Cygwin

It is possible to use the Metasploit Framework from inside of  Cygwin. Cygwin is a Unix-like environment that runs on Windows and allows most Unix-based applications to run without any changes (although they must be compiled specifically for Cygwin). If you are not familiar with Cygwin, please see the  Cygwin User Guide. During the Cygwin install, make sure that the "openssl", "ruby", and "readline" packages are included at the very minimum. The "subversion" package is required if you want to obtain online updates. Once Cygwin has been properly installed, access the Cygwin bash shell. Download the Unix tarball from  Framework Website and extract it to the directory of your choice. If you are lucky, all you need to do is enter the directory and execute "msfconsole" to get started.