failed to set __main__.__loader__ in Python

Question

When running any Python script (by double clicking a .py file on Windows 7) I'm getting a Python: failed to set __main__.__loader__ error message. What to do?

More details:

• The scripts work on other machines.
• The only version of Python installed on the machine on which the scripts don't work is 3.2.
• I get the same error when trying to run the script from the Windows shell (cmd).

• Here's an example for the content of a file named "hey.py" that I failed to run on my machine:

  print('hey')

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Turns out it was because the file was stored in a directory with a name not in English (Hebrew in my case). Make sure the path to the file contains only English letters.

http://bugs.python.org/issue16218