Manual installation on Windows

System requirements

At least 4GB of RAM
Windows 10 and above
AMD64 architecture
CTFreak configuration folder must not be located on a network drive
An active internet connection for at least 2 hours per day to allow license check (only required for licenses other than the FREE Edition)

NB: Ansible integration is only available for manual installation on a Linux or FreeBSD host.

Installing

To install CTFreak as a service, we will rely on sc command.

Copy downloaded ctfreak.exe binary to C:\ctfreak\ctfreak.exe.

Execute (as an administrator):

sc.exe create "CTFreak" binpath= "C:\ctfreak\ctfreak.exe run" start= auto displayname= "CTFreak"
sc.exe start "CTFreak"

Important notes:

As long as you have downloaded the executable from this site, you can ignore the warning message that the executable is unsigned.
Windows Defender antivirus has a nasty tendency to produce false positives with programs compiled in the Go language (which is the case with CTFreak). If Windows Defender blocks the execution of ctfreak.exe (and showed it had virus like Trojan:Script/Wacatac), add an exception to allow its execution.

At startup, CTFreak will create its dedicated config folder %LocalAppData%\ctfreak to store its configuration file, SQLite embedded database and execution log files (usually C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\ctfreak).

Navigate to http://localhost:6700.

To complete this installation, we encourage you to configure a reverse proxy and update the global settings.

Switching to a PostgreSQL backend database

If you have opted for a Business Edition license, you can also switch to a PostgreSQL backend database instead of the default embedded SQLite backend database.

Upgrading

Execute:

sc.exe stop "CTFreak"

Copy new released ctfreak.exe binary to C:\ctfreak\ctfreak.exe.

Execute:

sc.exe start "CTFreak"

Uninstall

Execute:

sc.exe stop "CTFreak"
sc.exe delete "CTFreak"

Delete C:\ctfreak folder.