Idle no longer works

[Terry Reedy]

On 8/13/2012 1:43 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:11:06 -0700 (PDT), jussij at zeusedit.com declaimed
> the following in gmane.comp.python.general:
>
>> On Saturday, August 11, 2012 4:09:16 PM UTC-7, Opap-OJ wrote:
>>
>>> I can no longer open the Idle IDE for Python on Windows 7.
>>> ..
>>> Any idea why?
>>
>> It looks like your registry has changed.

Most likely, or the Python installation has be damaged.

>> To fix this just use the Windows Explorer, click on a Python file
>> and use the 'Open with, Choose default program' menu and then
>> select the Idle IDE as the default program.
>
> 	That is probably the worst choice to make -- since what you've
> defined means double clicking on ANY .py file will NOT RUN IT -- but
> rather attempt to open it with the editor (IDLE)... But since IDLE
> itself is a .py file, it may fail to start at all.
>
> 	If double-clicking an IDLE.py file does not start it, then the
> registry has lost the association of .py to python.exe, not to IDLE. OR
> -- .py IS associated to python.exe but the association (the "run
> command" is not passing the .py file name to the python executable).
>
> 	On WinXP (with ActiveState 2.5.x version) my associations are as:
>
> E:\UserData\Wulfraed\My Documents>assoc .py
> .py=py_auto_file
>
> E:\UserData\Wulfraed\My Documents>ftype py_auto_file
> py_auto_file="E:\Python25\python.exe" "%1" %*
>
> E:\UserData\Wulfraed\My Documents>
>
> (with similar entries for .pyw to hook into pythonw.exe)
> {Just booted the Win7 laptop with Python 2.7.x: The only real difference
> is that it uses Python.File where the above has py_auto_file}

Re-installing, as I suggested in the first response, is much easier, 
especially for someone not familiar with the above.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy