Question

[Duncan Booth]

Tom Leggio wrote:

> Do I need this on my computer---Python---can I remove it without hurting 
> anything?

Without further information it is hard to answer, you haven't even said 
what operating system you are running, let alone what programs you have 
installed. Your message headers imply you are running some variant of 
Microsoft Windows, so I'll work on that assumption.

Windows itself does not use Python, so if you have Python installed it has 
been installed to run some other software. For example, my parents' 
computer has Python installed because my mum likes playing patience games 
(so it has Pysol installed).

If you uninstall Python then your system won't stop running, but it is 
likely that some other programs on the system will stop working. One option 
is to make sure you record the exact version of Python which you have 
installed, download that version from python.org and save the install file. 
Then uninstall it and if you notice later something no longer works you can 
reinstall it.

Alternatively, search your entire hard disc for files with the extensions 
.pyo, .pyc, .py, .pyw. You'll find a bunch of these in the directory where 
Python is installed (probably c:\python23 or c:\python24), but if you find 
any more elsewhere on your disc that will give you a clue what else is 
using Python. That isn't perfect (some applications use Python but change 
the file extensions), but it might help.