can't start IDLE 2.6 in Windows Vista

[Mensanator]

Python 2.6b1 installed ok on my XP laptop but not my Vista desktop.

First I got a strange application log error:

Activation context generation failed for
"C:\Python\Dlls\_socket.pyd".
Error in manifest or policy file
"C:\Python26\DLLs\Microsoft.VC90.CRT.MANIFEST"
on line 12. The value
"..\msvcr90.dll"
of attribute "name" in element
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1^file" is invalid.

Oddly, It IS valid. Poking around, I changed the name in the
manifest from "..\msvcr90.dll" to "msvcr90.dll" and copied
the .dll from the parent directory.

This stopped the app;ication error log messages.

In Googling around, I found the suggestion to do

python lib\idlelib\idle.py -n

which gives me this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "lib\idlelib\idle.py", line 21, in <module>
idlelib.PyShell.main()
  File "C:\Python26\lib\idlelib\PyShell.py", line 1382, in main
root = Tk(className="Idle")
  File "C:\Python26\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1647, in __init__
self.tk = _tkinter.create(screenName, baseName, className,
interactive, wantobjects, useTk, sync, use)
_tkinter.TclError: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following
directories:
    C:/Python26/lib/tcl8.5 C:/lib/tcl8.5 C:/lib/tcl8.5 C:/library C:/
library C:/tcl8.5.2/library C:/tcl8.5.2/library

And, just like the previous error, the file DOES exist

 Directory of C:\Python26\tcl\tcl8.5

06/12/2008  06:07 PM            24,808 init.tcl

But I note that the suggested places it looked have a forward slash
instead
of a the backward slash used by Windows. Is this why the file can't be
found?
I would try changing it but can't figure out where to look.