Question about admin rights and IDLE

[Terry Reedy]

Murphy.MarkS at epamail.epa.gov wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Apologies in advance for a potentially redundant posting -- I sent a
> similar question to the help box yesterday.
> 
> I have a Geographic Info System (GIS) user that is having problems
> editing with Python IDLE on a WindowsXP machine unless she has admin
> rights.  I had initially thought there might be a place where you can
> change the 'user rights' settings in Python, but wasn't able to find it.
> So, I did a fresh install of Python 2.5.1 and told it to be available to
> all users during the install process.  The problem is that IDLE still
> seems to be available only to the person who has admin rights on a given
> machine.  Can anybody make sense of this and help me fix it?

I have both 2.5.2 and 3.0b2 loaded for all users on stock xp with all 
upgrades.  I put /Python25 and /Python30 under Program Files instead of 
C:.  As normal non-admin user, I can edit files in ./misc (added by me) 
under either, or in ./Lib/site-packages/my_package or, of course, under 
My Documents.

You did not specify the 'problems'.  If it is saving (which is required 
to run a file), then perhaps your user is trying to save in an 
admin-only directory.  If IDLE is not running at all, perhaps you have 
some special government security mods.  Perhaps changing install 
location would help.  Also, does 'fresh install' mean uninstall first? 
This is not normally required, but you are not in a normal situation ;-).

Or perhaps you are running into somthing connected with this warning:
     ****************************************************************
     Personal firewall software may warn about the connection IDLE
     makes to its subprocess using this computer's internal loopback
     interface.  This connection is not visible on any external
     interface and no data is sent to or received from the Internet.
     ****************************************************************
Perhaps you are getting silent blockage.  Related to the above, there 
can only be one IDLE process running on the machine at one time.  If 
somehow one were being started on the admin account, for instance .... .

Terry Jan Reedy

PS. Unless you have good reason not too, consider installing 2.5.2 
instead with its many bug fixes.