python.exe is not a valid win32 executable

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 3:14 AM, Steffen Herzfeldt <snafuclan at web.de> wrote:
> Hi,
> today i downloaded python3.5.0 x86 (win32) installer.
> after the programm installed the files into its standard directory without
> asking me if i wanted it in a different position, i tried running a program
> that was written for python 3.3.x
> the response of my system was an error message "python.exe is not a valid 32
> bit executable." .
>
> I just wanted to let you know that your program just doesn't work on WinXP.

Yes, that's correct.

> I guess you just think "Linux is better anyway" to which i agree until it
> comes to games requiring directx, but that doesn't change the fact that the
> installer was labeled as working on win32 systems.

Python 3.5 *does* work on Win32 systems that are still supported by
Microsoft - specifically, Windows 7, 8, and 10, as well as the server
builds that are still in support. Maintaining support for Windows XP
would mean avoiding the benefit of newer APIs and other features, and
the policy of the Python development team is to support only those
releases of Windows which still have upstream support as of when they
are released.

You can use Python 3.4 and 2.7 on XP, and you can use Python 3.5 on
Win 7 or better.

> I hope you solve the problem.

There isn't a problem to be solved, except for the one that a
12-year-old release of a closed-source operating system is still in
use. Do you expect the latest Python builds to run on Windows 98SE?
No. It's time to move on.

Well, actually, there is one issue here, and that's that the installer
goes all the way through until the very end, and then you get that
cryptic error message. That's a known flaw in the installer, and once
Python 3.5.1 is released, that should be fixed - but it's "fixed" in
the sense that you now will get a simple and clear message, rather
than being "fixed" in terms of letting you run Python 3.5 on Win XP.

> keep up the good work and once Linux natively handles directx i'll dump MS
> immediately.

I don't know what you mean by "natively", but I play a number of
DirectX games on my Debian Linux. Give it a try! You might find that
it all works perfectly.

ChrisA