2.1.1 installer hangs on Win2k Professional

[Tim Peters]

[Mike Harrison]
> Has anyone gotten the windows installer to get past the selection of
> components? On my win2k machine, it just hangs when I click next at
> that point and I have to terminate the process. It gives me an error
> that the win16 subsystem is unstable and must be shutdown.

I've never seen that happen (I have tried to provoke it!), but have heard of
it (just) a few times.  Some people report success after (temporarily or
permanently <wink>) switching COMPSPEC from cmd.exe to command.com, or vice
versa.  The true cause is unknown.  Have you installed Win2K Service Pack 2?

> Is this installer a win16 program?

Yes.

> If so, why?

Because that's the only kind of installer Wise 5.0a builds.

For 2.2, Wise Solutions is kindly allowing us to use InstallMaster 8.1
instead, and that produces a 32-bit installer.  Wise 5.0a was released when
Win95 was new, and it seems a miracle to me that the installers it builds
*usually* run fine on all flavors of Windows since then; the new installer
definitely runs better in some Win2K corner cases I've been able to provoke
(but, as above, your corner case is one I've never seen).

> Is there any way of installing Python on windows without using the
> non-win2k-compatible installer?

There's something almost-unique about your machine, but afraid I don't know
what it is.

If you don't want to wait for 2.2 (2.2 alpha 2 will be the first time we
release the new-technology installer), and you've installed SP2, and the
COMSPEC trick doesn't work for you either, you could try ActiveState's
installer:

    http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePython/

That's an MSI-based install.