[Biopython-dev] Biopython for Windows NT

[Brad Chapman]

Hi Nissim;
Thanks for writing -- apologies for the delay in getting back with
you. Our windows sysadmin just got back today so that I could get
myself permissions to test this out and try installing on 2000
machines. Thanks for waiting.

> I downloaded the self-installing executable 
> 
> biopython-1.00a1.win32-py2.0.exe
> 
> to my PC running Windows NT.  When I go ahead and run it, I'm
> prompted for the 'installation directory', but the text box 
> won't accept any characters.  Any ideas ?  

I'm not sure if I exactly know what box you are talking about, but I'm
thinking this is the initial box where it tries to find your Python
installation. I hope that is right and the rest of this mail helps.

After playing around with this for a while on both 98 and Windows 2000
(sorry that we don't have an NT box at my lab to try it on), I've come
to grips with some reasons why this might not be working. Basically,
it appears that the installer looks in the registry for a Python
installation, and pulls out all of the applicable installs. If it
doesn't find an installation, the type-in box will be useless (as you
found out). The installer was built using distutils, so this is a
limitation there. 

The best thing to do is to make sure it finds your python
installation. I can think of the following reasons why it might not
find python:

-> You don't have python installed. 

-> You don't have the right version of python installed. The installer
requires python 2.0. If you need a version for 2.1, I can make one for
you.

-> The installation of python is not in the registry for all
users. Under Windows 2000, if you install python without Administrator
permissions, the registry info for python will only be available for
the user who installed it. The fix here is to reinstall python with
Administrator permissions.

Does this help the problem? Don't hesitate to ask again if you have
more problems getting it running.

Brad