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Asked: 2026-05-26T15:04:45+00:00

So I wrote a Python script which does some simple stuff. It was originally

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So I wrote a Python script which does some simple stuff. It was originally going to run on a Unix server but due to crappy network security settings which TPTB refuse to change, we need to run it on a Windows server instead. However, the administrators of said Windows server refuse to do anything helpful like install Python.

What are my options for running a Python script on Windows without Python?

Consideration 1:

Something like Py2Exe – I found this after a quick Google search and it seems promising. From what I can tell, it’ll generate a bunch of files but we can just xcopy that directory to our Windows machine and it will be completely isolated and not have any external dependencies. Does anyone have any insight on how well this works? Obviously, it depends on my Python script but fortunately this script is quite simple and only uses built in Python libraries such as urllib2 and urlparse.

Consideration 2:

We can assume the Windows server has at least some version of the .NET Framework installed too, which brings IronPython to mind. I’ve never used this before, but I’ve always wanted to. From what I can tell, it will compile Python code into CLS compliant IL code which can be run natively under the .NET runtime. However, does this require additional .NET libraries to be installed on the server? Can I just bundle those DLLs with my program? Or, does it require I rewrite my Python script to call into .NET Framework specific classes instead of using things like urllib2 or urlparse?

Thanks!

PS – The ironic part: I actually barely know Python and I’m a .NET expert, but I wrote the script in Python because I was told it would run on a Unix server. Had I known we’d end up running this on a Windows server, I’d have written the thing in C# to begin with in about 1/10th of the time. Fail.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Will they let you copy executables onto the server at all? If so then you should be able to do a non-admin installation of Python or use Portable Python which can just be copied into a folder without any installation at all.

    Nothing wrong with Py2exe, but it does mean you then have to build the script into a fresh executable each time you update it. Also Py2exe has a slightly longer startup time than a Python interpreter because it has to extract the Python dlls into a temporary folder each time it runs; that only matters of course if you run your script a lot.

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