Reproducible on Windows XP SP1.

If one changes the install path to
"C:\Program Files\Python\", the resulting IDLE shortcut
does get pythonw.exe running but fails to produce any
window, even if the OS is restarted after the install.

If one installs to "C:\Python23\" or "C:\Python\", it works.
So I assume it has something to do with whitespace in
the path.

>Please notice that it is strongly recommended to install
>Python in a path without space

Where is it recommended?  The installer should warn the
user.

>one frequently needs to type the path on the command
>line or put it into wrapper scripts; in either case,
>spaces cause problems.

So recommending that the install occur in \Python23\
is fine.  But with ~x notation and quotation marks, there
should be no trouble supporting whitespace on Windows.

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Yep, this bit me, too.

This bug is caused by:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=436259&group_id=5470&atid=105470
[ 436259 ] [Windows] exec*/spawn* problem with spaces in args

As that bug notes, distutils already works around this. 
Idle could borrow the same workaround, except with P_NOWAIT.

Hey, maybe the workaround could be polished and published as
"os.spawn(executable, args, env=None, wait=False,
search_path=False)".  Neat.

Cheers, and thanks for Python.

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Should the windows installer be modified to warn when the
path contains spaces?

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Now works with spaces in path.
Fixed at PyShell.py Rev 1.82
Backported to release22-maint

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um, release23-maint