distutils installation fails in WinNT; sys.exec_prefix empty

[Gordon McMillan]

Fred Yankowski wrote:

> I just downloaded Distutils-0.1.tar.gz (which might be better
> named Distutils-0.1.tgz to accommodate WinZip), expanded it, and
> tried installing it by running 'python -v setup.py install'.  It
> ran OK for a while, then took an exception in _init_nt() in
> sysconfig.py, apparently because sys.exec_prefix (and sys.prefix,
> for that matter) are both set to '' on my system.

Just a data point: my NT 4 SP 4 yields:
Python 1.5.2 (#0, Apr 13 1999, 10:51:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] 
on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, 
Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'D:\\Programs\\Python'
>>> sys.exec_prefix
'D:\\Programs\\Python'
>>>

That's from a binary install.

- Gordon