Idle won't start

[John Matthews]

In article <8eh830tlh056hk21hm9v49m3qcinjv4pq9 at 4ax.com>, shuvit@
127.0.0.1 says...
> 
> This might be a different problem if your problem is truly
> intermittent, but I am finding that IDLE has conflicts with other
> installed programs.  I have been running Python 2.3 under Windows
> XP-Home with no problem for the last few months.  Yesterday I
> installed Ruby 1.8.1-11 and now IDLE won't start.  No response to
> clicking the icon, selecting the menu item,  Nada.  Removing Ruby
> restores IDLE.
> 
> With Ruby installed, when I run IDLE from a command line
> C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib>idle.py
> I get a message:
> """
> _tkinter.TclError: Cant find a usable init.tcl in the following
> directories:  <c:\ruby\tcl\lib\tcl8.3> <c:\ruby\tcl\lib\tcl8.3>
> c:/ruby/tcl/lib/tcl8.4  C:/Python23/lib/tcl8.4  C:/lib/tcl8.4
> C:/library
> This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.
> """
> I have no idea why IDLE is looking for library routines in the Ruby
> subdirectories, or why all the strange variations in the search path
> above, but it is clear that Ruby and IDLE cannot co-exist on one
> computer.
> 
> Note:  Re-installing Python23 after Ruby is installed doesn't help.
> You have to remove Ruby completely.
> 
> -- Dave

I have similar problems at my office machine (Win2K Pro) and my home 
machine (WinXP). I do not, nor have ever had Ruby installed. The problem 
seems intermittent. I gave up and went back to Python 2.2. I hated to go 
back because the 2.3 version of IDLE was nice, but I beleive that it is 
somehow broken and will need to be fixed for me to use it again.

John