Since version 1.2.21, npm has a new option for the install command. --no-bin-links
You can use if for installing a specific node module
npm install express --no-bin-links
and also for a package.json install
npm install --no-bin-links
With this option I’ve been able to install many npm modules without problems in my shared forlder inside the VM (Ubuntu guest, Windows Host)
The commit where the option was added to the npm code is b4c58617039c21c10889a9869f8e86a23e17d3a0