Unable to run IDLE Under Windows

[Steve Holden]

maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu wrote:
> Peter Otten wrote:
> 
>>Perhaps your configuration files contain bad data:
>>
>># IDLE reads several config files to determine user preferences.
> 
> This
> 
>># file is the default config file for general idle settings.
> 
> ...
> 
>># On Windows2000 and Windows XP the .idlerc directory is at
>>#       Documents and Settings\<username>\.idlerc
> 
> 
> I have a similar problem: I can't run the Python IDLE app (i.e. the
> file pythonw.exe), on either of two different machines.  However, I'm
> using WinXP (and Python 2.4), and there is no .idlerc directory as
> listed above.  One of hte machines had a .idlerc file under the Python
> dir, and renaming it didn't help.  I just ran a search on the entire
> hard drive of the other machine, and the only .idlerc dir is in my
> CygWin home directory.  Since I'm not trying to run idle from a CygWin
> bash shell etc., I don't think it's looking there.  (Just to make sure,
> I renamed that dir...no luck.)
> 
In this case it's possible (and this is just a guess) that you are both 
running with what are called "roaming profiles". In this case your 
".idlerc" file may appear somewhere on a network drive that's 
automatically mapped rather than a subdirectory of C:\Documents and 
Settings.

You should be able to find it under XP with the command

     echo %HOMEPATH%

Take a look in that directory and see if there's an .idlerc.

> I uninstalled and re-installed Python 2.4, no change.  When I try to
> run pythonw.exe, there is no indication that anything happens.  CPU
> usage jumps for a  fraction of a second, then nothing.
> 
You wouldn't expect anything - pythonw.exe is the no-console 
interpreter, so if you don;t give it a program to run it will terminate 
pretty much immediately, and if the program doesn't use windowing then 
you won't see anything happen even if you *do* run something.

I presume you *can* run python.exe :-)

If so then try running IDLE with python -v to get more information about 
what's going on.

> I tried running 'idle' under CygWin, and it gives the following error
> (lengthy traceback omitted, let me know if I should include that too):
> 
>   C:\cygwin\bin\python2.4.exe (2904): *** unable to remap
>   C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl-0.9.7.dll to same address as parent
>   (0x740000) != 0x750000
>       2 [main] python2.4 3080 fork_parent: child 2904 died waiting
>   for dll loading
> 
This is a known issue with Cygwin. Fortunately you can fix it with the 
rebaseall command. You could try the following steps to fix Cygwin, 
which is currently unable to load a DLL at the same address in a forked 
sub-process. Note this is voodoo, so no guarantees ...


1. Close all Cygwin windows (and stop Cygwin services, if any are running).

2. In a new standard Cygwin command interpreter window run

   rebaseall -v

That should be it.

> Any other ideas why IDLE won't run?
> 
Well, that's a few things to think about, anyway.

regards
  Steve
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