[Python-Dev] why is not 64-bit installer the default download link for Windows? (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull turnbull.stephen.fw at u.tsukuba.ac.jp
Wed Jul 11 02:14:12 EDT 2018

Ivan Pozdeev via Python-Dev writes:

"One or more issues caused the setup to fail. Please fix the issues and the retry setup. For more information see the log file .

0x80070661 - This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor."

Pretty descriptive in my book.

Experience shows that's definitely not descriptive enough for my university's students (and starting from AY 2021 we're moving to Python 3 as the university-wide programming course language, yay!) They have no idea that "processor type" means "word size", or what alternative package to look for. Sometimes they take the "contact vendor" wording to mean "package is broken". I don't think the Japanese or Chinese students will have 32-bit machines (haven't seen one among my advisees since March 2016), but we do get some students from less wealthy countries who may be using older machines.

So I think it would be really nice if the installer detects the wordsize mismatch, and issues an explicit message like

This package is intended for a 64-it machine, but yours is a 32-bit
machine.

Please download and install the package specifically for 32-bit
machines instead.

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