Hi Paul, thanks for you efforts, but up to now it still didn't work. I'm using Windows XP Professional (32 bit). I tried an install on two different machines with the same negative result. I proceeded like you suggested. - I installed for all users, - I disabled the register extensions When doing the same call to execute idle as you, I got the following: Traceback (most recent call last): File "c:\Python26\Lib\idlelib\idle.py", line 6, in <module> import PyShell File "c:\Python26\Lib\idlelib\PyShell.py", line 9, in <module> import socket File "c:\Python26\Lib\socket.py", line 46, in <module> import _socket ImportError: DLL load failed: <in German: system cannot find this file> I get a similar error message, when I do from turtle import * with ... import _tkinter Import Error. DLL load failed .... sys.path is exactly like yours. (So the DLLs directory is contained in sys.path) _tkinter.pyd and _socket.pyd are present in DLLs. I've installed Python 2.5 on both machines. On the first one I moreover deleted all entries concerning Python (2.5) from the PATH variable, with no positive effect. On the other machine I have also installed Python 3000 successfully, which even still doesn't have IDLE in it's Menu. Nevertheless there C:\Python30> python Lib\idlelib\idle.py brings up IDLE 3.0a1 (and I even can import and use a port of xturtle.py to Python 3000 there). I never experienced a similar Problem before when installing Python. Any ideas? Regards, Gregor