[Tutor] XP and python 2.4, some progress

[Danny Yoo]

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Jeffrey Thomas Peery wrote:

> I wasn't able to get the IDLE started in windows XP. I had it working then I
> upgraded to 2.4, then it didn't work so I switched back to 2.3, still didn't
> work so I'm back to 2.4.  I did some looking around and I was able to get
> the IDLE started by setting the shortcut on my desktop to:
>
> C:\Python24\python.exe C:\Python24\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw -n


Hi Jeff,

Oh no, not again!  *grin*


> Not sure what this does. But is seems to get it going. What is going on
> here? Also I get a console that appears with this message - I have no
> idea what it means:
>
> Warning: configHandler.py - IdleConf.GetThemeDict - problem retrieving
> theme element 'builtin-background'


Ok, we've seen something like this before; what you are running into is
probably the same thing.  Mike and Jacob have found that IDLE broke on
them when upgrading from Python 2.3 to Python 2.4.  See the thread
starting from:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2004-December/033672.html

It turns out that the bug has to do with the way IDLE now handles its
configuration files.  If you've made some special configuration (like
color customization), the bug causes IDLE not to start up cleanly because
the customized config files aren't compatible.

To work around this, rename your '.idlerc/' directory to something else
temporarily.  The '.idlerc' directory should be somewhere in your home
within the 'Documents and Settings' directory.  The '.idlerc/' directory
contains all the user-defined settings that you've made to IDLE, so if we
hide it, IDLE should try to regenerate a clean set.

After renaming it to something else, try restarting IDLE with the icon,
and see if it comes up now.


I hope this helps!