Command Line Inputs from Windows

[Ken Stewart]

Chris, Dennis, James, and Mark:

SUCCESS!  Thanks for your suggestions.  It was the registry.  Kudos to 
Dennis.  The data strings for a lot of different "command" keys in the 
registry were missing the %* (percent star) characters.  Thanks Chris for 
the explanation on why the %* string is needed.

Here is a sample key:
S1-5-21-1560217580-722697556-320042093-1000-Classes
    py_auto_file
        shell
            open
                command

The corrected data for the key looks like this:

"C:\Python34\python.exe" %1 %*

I used the 'find' tool in regedit to search for python in the registry. 
There were many hits on the word python but only a handful had data fields 
similar to the one above.  Every instance was missing the %* string.  I 
modified them all.  My script didn't start working until after I'd modified 
the very last one.  Happily, my computer still boots after mucking around in 
the registry.

I haven't yet investigated the launcher suggested by Chris and Mark.  That 
may well be the proper solution.  At the moment it looks like the Python 
installer didn't create these registry entries properly in Windows 7.

Thanks again

Ken Stewart