Table of Contents
Visit the
ActivePython Downloads page and download the
MSI
file of the latest version of Python
(which was 2.4 as of this writing). Double-click this file and
start the installation.
Note that the official versions of Python are available from python.org/download. I recommend using ActiveState's installer for Python since their Windows version comes with other useful utilities such as bindings to the Win32 API.
An interesting fact is that about 70% of Python downloads are by Windows users. Of course, this doesn't give the complete picture since almost all Linux, BSD and Mac users will have Python installed already on their systems by default.
In order to use Python from the Windows DOS prompt, we need
to set the PATH
environment variable
appropriately.
For Windows 2000, XP and 2003, click on System
Variables section, click on the variable named
PATH, then select Edit
and add C:\Python24
to the end of the
information already present. Make sure you are adding the correct
folder path.
For older versions of Windows, add the line
PATH=%PATH%;C:\Python24
to the file
C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
and restart the system. For
Windows NT, use the AUTOEXEC.NT
file.