Python2.4 on Win32 suddenly started crashing last night

[MRAB]

On 2012-09-13 14:35, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 09/13/12 08:12, MRAB wrote:
>> I've just downloaded, installed and tested Python 2.4.4. No crash.
>>
>> This is with Windows XP Pro (32-bit).
>
> Could I get the MD5 of your $PYTHONDIR\DLLs\_socket.pyd to see if it
> matches mine?
>
>>>> data = file('_socket.pyd', 'rb').read()
>>>> import md5
>>>> md5.md5(data).hexdigest()
> '7a7fc2d9e9df65690658c989bd9e95bb'
>
> It's looking like it might be a corrupt DLL or something to which it
> links is causing issues.  Alternatively, it might be possible to
> find/download the 2.4.3 _socket.pyd, or possibly overwrite it with a
> 2.4.4 _socket.pyd (I don't know how backwards compatible the ABI is
> for binary modules)
>
I get this:

Python 2.4.4 (#71, Oct 18 2006, 08:34:43) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on 
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
 >>> data = file(r'C:\Python24\DLLs\_socket.pyd', 'rb').read()
 >>> import md5
 >>> md5.md5(data).hexdigest()
'166f1020fedc254d6f25ccee0994caff'