Python on windows7 intel 64bit

Question

I've been messing around with Python over the weekend and find myself pretty much back at where I started.

I've specifically been having issues with easy_install and nltk giving me errors about not finding packages, etc.

I've tried both Python 2.6 and Python 3.1.

I think part of the problem may be that I'm running windows 7 in 64bit mode on an Intel T5750 chipset. I'm thinking of downloading Python for windows extension http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/, but not sure which version to get. Why do packages have a specific AMD64, but not intel?

However, this may not even solve my problems. Any recommendations on getting Python to work in this environment?

I've currently got Python 3.1 installed, and removed 2.6

Answer 1

The most popular 64-bit mode for "86-oid" processor is commonly known as AMD64 because AMD first came up with it (Intel at that time was pushing Itanium instead, and that didn't really catch fire -- it's still around but I don't even know if Win7 supports it); Intel later had to imitate that mode to get into the mass-64 bit market, but it's still commonly known as AMD64 after its originator. For Windows 7 in 64-bit mode, AMD64 seems likely to be what you want.

The 64-bit-Windows downloads from activestate come with a few important pieces that aren't part of the standard python.org 64-bit Windows builds, and might perhaps make your life easier.