Logged In: YES 
user_id=21627

I cannot reproduce this on XPSP2. Can you please use
regedit.exe to find out
a) whether HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Python exists, and
b) if so, what its subkeys are? In particular, is anything
about 2.4 present?

If installers choose 2.3, it might be that they have
extension modules which need to be recompiled for 2.4, in
which case the installer specifically looks for a 2.3
installation, rather than the latest installation.