Installing python with python win32 extensions on a network drive

Question

I need to keep a large number of Windows XP machines running the same version of python, with an assortment of modules, one of which is python-win32. I thought about installing python on a network drive that is mounted by all the client machines, and just adjust the path on the clients. Python starts up fine from the network, but when importing win32com I get a pop-up error saying:

The procedure entry point ?PyWinObject_AsHANDLE@@YAHPAU_object@@PAPAXH@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library pywintypes24.dll

after dismissing the message dialog I get in the console:

ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.

I searched the python directory for the pywintypes24.dll and it is present in "Lib\site-packages\pywin32_system32" .

What am I missing and is there another way in which I can install Python + Python-Win32 + additional module once and have them running on many machines? I don't have access to the Microsoft systems management tools, so I need to be a bit more low-tech than that.

Answer 1

On every machine you have to basically run following pywin32_postinstall.py -install once. Assuming your python installation on the network is N:\Python26, run following command on every client:

N:\Python26\python.exe N:\Python26\Scripts\pywin32_postinstall.py -install

Another important thing is Good Luck!. The reason is that you might need to do this as admin. In my case such setup worked for all but one computer. I still did not figure out why.