NEURON Installation on PC under MSWindows

The mswindows version comes in two components. The first consists of neuron.exe, examples, and useful interpreter files.

The second consists of files that are only necessary if you wish to write your own membrane mechanisms using the model description language and compile them into a dll that can be loaded into neuron.exe. You do not need to install this part if you already have a dll file containing the desired mechanisms.

0.) Is win32s installed?

NEURON.EXE is a 32 bit program (it also works under Windows NT) and under mswindows requires a recent version of the win32s dll. If you are not sure you have it, download the pw1118.exe file into an empty temporary directory, execute it and follow the resultant readme instructions.

1.) Install neuron.exe

This part is packaged into two files called nrndisk1.exe and nrndisk2.z1. Installation consists of downloading these two files into an empty temporary directory, executing nrndisk1.exe, and then executing the resultant install.exe.

README for installing neuron.exe
download the nrndisk1.exe file (1.3 MB)
download the nrndisk2.z1 file (1.45 MB)
If your browser attempts to read the above nrndisk2.z1 file as a text file then either modify your browser options so it downloads files with .z1 extensions or else download nrndisk2.zip and RENAME IT TO nrndisk2.z1 because IT IS NOT A ZIP file and the installer will not work unless the file is called nrndisk2.z1 Notes, bugs, oddities with respect to mswindows

2.) Install mknrndll (optional)

This part is only necessary if you need to compile model descriptions of membrane mechanisms into a dll (dynamically loadable library). If you already have dll files containing the mechanisms you need, you do not need to install this part. It is packaged into two files called nrndisk3.exe and nrndisk4.zip. Installation consists of downloading these two files into an empty temporary directory, executing nrndisk3.exe, and then executing the resultant install.exe. This part contains a gcc compiler and enough utilities to build dll's from model description files.

README for installing mknrndll.bat
download the nrndisk3.exe file (1.2 MB)
download the nrndisk4.zip file (1.4 MB)
Notes with respect to mswindows

Associating Hoc Files with NEURON.
in Windows 3.1
in Windows 95 and NT


This is the ftp directory containing the above files.
ftp.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/mswin
M. Hines