Installing:
    python-2.3.2-1.exe /S
where the current working directory is on a network
drive causes Python 2.3 to mis-install on the network
drive, instead of the system drive (C:).  The
installation takes a long time to run.

I observed this on Windows XP SP1, with all current
security patches applied (thru MS03-049).  The problem
occurred on multiple machines.  The servers is both
cases were Windows 2000 servers, sharing a drive with
the workstation.

Python 2.3 shows up in Add/Remove Programs, but cannot
be removed, except by hand.

Copying the installer to the local C: drive, and
running the command from there, was successful in
silently, and correctly, installing Python 2.3

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I can reproduce this behaviour, and confirm that this is a bug.
Not even does it install to the network drive, also the
paths in the registry are wrong - they do not contain a
drive letter.

It has probably to do with the fact that our default
installation directory is "\Python23" (note that this does
*not* contain a drive letter).
The installer seems to do the right things when run
interactively, but fails when run in silent mode.

I see three possible solutions:
- Install some magic into the wise script to determine the
system drive (however this is defined), it may be difficult
because wise doesn't have commands to determine the drive
letter of a given path.

- Enable the 'read from values files' option for the MAINDIR
variable, this allows to create a file before installation
which will supply values to the installer.  I have never
used this feature, so I do not know whether it works or not.

- Live with the current state and say: silent installs do
not work.

Assigning to Tim. Tim, any comments?

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Sorry, I never tried a network install or a silent install.  I 
always figured people who wanted gonzo installation gimmicks 
would be much happier with ActiveState's MSI-based installer 
anyway.

Of course Wise is closed-source, so we can't look at their 
code to figure out what it's doing.  The things of this ilk I had 
to fix in the past therefore required hanging out in the Wise 
tech support forums.  Sometimes it was easy to get a good 
answer, more often impossible.  If your copy of Wise is still in 
its support period, you could ask Wise directly what's up with 
the odd /S behavior.  Otherwise it requires thrashing in the 
dark.

Personally, if I had to piss away time on that again, I'd rather 
spend it moving to an open-source installer (which may have 
bugs too, but at least then you can figure out exactly why, 
and probably even get them fixed).  In the version of Wise I 
had, I never did find a way to determine "the system drive", 
short of writing an external DLL for the install script to invoke; 
under InnoSetup, the system drive is the value of a 
predefined variable <wink>.

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Ok, in this case I would say "don't do this".
Python 2.4 will most probably use a different installer, so
I'm closing this.