Windows installers crash without useful explanation, when Python is located in /Program Files/Python27 and the installer is started without admin rights/UAC. I experienced this with Windows 8 and installers for packages pandas and rtree.

a) show error message instead of crash

As I don't use distutils for packaging, I am just guessing it would make sense to:

b) let bdist_wininst --user-access-control default to 'auto'

I'm assuming that this is still an issue.  I've not tested it myself as I've never understood why python gets put in "Program Files" so I don't have such a setup and won't be creating one.

I just noticed that I misread the original issue: it's not about the Python Windows installer, but about bdist_wininst packages.

`--user-access-control auto` doesn't work for me...

With Python 2.7.8 installed ''for all'' in "C:/Program Files (x86)/Python27", an installer built with `bdist_wininst --user-access-control auto` will *not* ask for permission elevation and will crash as described above. If I build the installer with `bdist_wininst --user-access-control force` it will ask for permission elevation and the install will proceed normally. 

Same behavior for the amd64 version of 2.7.8 installed in "C:/Program Files/Python27".

However, one way or the other I think it would be annoying to ask for permission elevation when it's not actually needed, like when python is installed in the default "C:/Python27" location for example. 

So I think a better fix would be to simply *not crash* and fail saying elevated permissions are required. The user can then simply do a "Run as administrator" on the installer from the Windows explorer and things work as expected.

The reason of the crash is pretty trivial, there's no check for success of the creation of the installation logfile. Trapping this and aborting (with a hint to use "Run as administrator") would be enough to fix the issue, I think.

Ping. Probably too late for 2.7.9, but the patch is about adding a check a null pointer dereference and the follow-up crash, so someone might be interested to commit it, or a similar fix.

The patch looks safe enough to me, if Benjamin is willing to consider it for 2.7.9?

Seems fine for 3.4 and 3.5 too, if nobody is opposed (or wants to argue over the wording of the message).

I'm okay with it if Steve is.

New changeset 1ac5aec658f6 by Benjamin Peterson in branch '2.7':
give a nice message when installer is launched w/o admin rights (closes #16561)
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/1ac5aec658f6

New changeset caee1eabba1e by Benjamin Peterson in branch '3.4':
give a nice message when installer is launched w/o admin rights (closes #16561)
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/caee1eabba1e

New changeset ef5bbdc81796 by Benjamin Peterson in branch 'default':
merge 3.4 (#16561)
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/ef5bbdc81796