404 401 Unauthorized during any npm operation for ionic/angular artifact

Updated: Magically, today everything started working as expected … yeah!

npm -version
npm -version
5.6.0

During any npm operation I get:

npm i
npm ERR! code E401
npm ERR! 404 401 Unauthorized: @angular/animations@5.2.11

Or…

npm install @ionic/storage
npm ERR! code E401
npm ERR! 404 401 Unauthorized: @ionic/storage@latest

or

npm i -g ionic to update

npm ERR! code E401
npm ERR! 404 401 Unauthorized: @ionic/cli-framework@1.5.0

Some other similar issues, but nothing as generic as this (and their resolutions do not work).

– Update

This problem is happening only my Windows workstation. I have a mac where it seems to be working correctly.

Also, I updated node to 10.14/npm 6.4.1 with the same results.

I can use npm for any other artifact, such as cordova … just not ionic or angular libraries.