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I've read every other google source and SO thread, with nothing working.

Python 2.7.3 32bit installed on Windows 7 64bit. Download, extracting, and then trying to install PyCrypto results in "Unable to find vcvarsall.bat".

So I install MinGW and tack that on the install line as the compiler of choice. But then I get the error "RuntimeError: chmod error".

How in the world do I get around this? I've tried using pip, which gives the same result. I found a prebuilt PyCrypto 2.3 binary and installed that, but it's nowhere to be found on the system (not working).

Any ideas?

Coldblackice
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  • possible duplicate of [error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2817869/error-unable-to-find-vcvarsall-bat) –  Jul 10 '12 at 01:55
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    If you just want to __install it__, just [__download the binary PyCrypto installer__](http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml) – bobobobo Dec 20 '12 at 01:39
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    That's very bold advice, installing a binary cryptography package from an unknown server from overseas... – Darren Ringer Mar 06 '15 at 21:32
  • Even though I ended up going with the chosen answer, I eventually relented and managed to build the package myself (although sure enough I didn't bother to verify any signatures on anything, because really, are we ever truly secure?) Paranoia and apathy aside, however, the following link solved all my most difficult problems and made the process a snap: http://blog.victorjabur.com/2011/06/05/compiling-python-2-7-modules-on-windows-32-and-64-using-msvc-2008-express/ – Darren Ringer May 20 '15 at 04:27
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    PyCrypto is dead. The author has dropped it for a while. https://github.com/dlitz/pycrypto/issues/173 – Smit Johnth May 31 '16 at 18:50
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    Even more, it has an exploitable buffer overflow https://pony7.fr/ctf:public:32c3:cryptmsg – Smit Johnth Jun 18 '16 at 20:29
  • very helpful @SmitJohnth. So where to? [pyca/cryptography](https://github.com/pyca/cryptography)? – Bob Stein Nov 07 '17 at 00:04
  • @BobStein Depends upon. Pycryptodome is compatible, i.e. you can keep existing code working, but if you don't care - I don't know the answer. – Smit Johnth Jul 25 '18 at 01:21
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    Currently voidspace is exposing an invalid certificate, any other source of trustable binaries for Windows? – Salvioner Apr 12 '19 at 08:49

19 Answers19

189

If you don't already have a C/C++ development environment installed that is compatible with the Visual Studio binaries distributed by Python.org, then you should stick to installing only pure Python packages or packages for which a Windows binary is available.

Fortunately, there are PyCrypto binaries available for Windows: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml#pycrypto

UPDATE:
As @Udi suggests in the comment below, the following command also installs pycrypto and can be used in virtualenv as well:

easy_install http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/pycrypto-2.6.1/pycrypto-2.6.1.win32-py2.7.exe

Notice to choose the relevant link for your setup from this list

If you're looking for builds for Python 3.5, see PyCrypto on python 3.5

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Michael Dillon
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    you can use easy_install to install the binaries from the url: `easy_install http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/pycrypto26/pycrypto-2.6.win32-py2.7.exe` – Udi Sep 16 '13 at 22:49
  • The installer at http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml#pycrypto worked for me. One tip: If you inadvertently run the 64-bit installer but have a 32-bit version of Python 2.7, the installer will fail with the alert "Python version 2.7 required, which was not found in the registry." – Steve Saporta Apr 30 '14 at 21:18
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    gui installer failed for me. easy_install succeded – pscheit Aug 08 '14 at 19:35
  • @Udi why do you need easy_install for an exe? – Smit Johnth Dec 07 '14 at 05:36
  • @SmitJohnth `easy_install` will install the package in a virtualenv (if you have one), and will suppress all graphical interaction (to automate or just save time). – Udi Dec 07 '14 at 11:07
  • Note: I've had much more success with the Win32 binary for PyCrypto than the Win64. (Sorry, it's been a while; I forget the details.) Obviously, the Win32 PyCrypto must be installed on a Win32 Python. This will work fine even if your OS is a 64-bit Windows. – George V. Reilly Jan 26 '15 at 01:21
  • I'm using cx_Freeze to create a Windows executable and if I only did `easy_install http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/pycrypto26/pycrypto-2.6.win32-py2.7.exe` then the .egg file was downloaded but didn't get installed in `site-packages`. Instead, I had to download the .exe and just install it manually. This way a `Crypto` folder was created in `site-packages`. – Kohányi Róbert Jun 06 '15 at 13:44
  • for multiple versions on windows (default python 2 version for example)... py -2 -m easy_install http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/pycrypto26/pycry pto-2.6.win32-py2.7.exe – steventaitinger Sep 03 '15 at 14:44
  • Hm, this looks good. I don't suppose that there is such a version available for pycrypto 2.7 alpha? I believe 2.7 alpha includes EAX mode AES, you see. – trevorKirkby Dec 05 '15 at 23:12
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Microsoft has recently recently released a standalone, dedicated Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7. If you're using Python 2.7, simply install that compiler and Setuptools 6.0 or later, and most packages with C extensions will now compile readily.

Jason R. Coombs
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  • Wow, how interesting. But still 84 Mb. And a little too late, see my answer about wheel. – Smit Johnth Dec 07 '14 at 05:34
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    Even with wheel, this is by far a better option than banging your head against VS 2008 and vcvarsall.bat for the times when you want to build something from source, or use a module that doesn't have a wheel. MSVC for Python might not be around in the "long term," but it's extremely useful right now. – GrandOpener Jul 15 '15 at 22:23
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    Still the easiest solution I've found; I've always hated having to rely on pre-built binaries from random (to me) websites. – Myk Willis Jan 03 '16 at 16:09
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After years and years, python finally agreed for a binary disribution called wheel which allows to install even binary extensions on Windows without having a compiler with simple pip install packagename. There is a list of popular packages with their status. Pycrypto is not there yet, but lxml, PySide and Scrapy for example.

Edited Nov 2015: pip uninstall pycrypto & pip install pycryptodome. It is a pycrypto fork with new features and it supports wheel. It replaces pycrypto, so existing code will continue to work (see https://pycryptodome.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/examples.html)

Smit Johnth
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For VS2010:

SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS100COMNTOOLS%

For VS2012:

SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS110COMNTOOLS%

then Call:

pip install pyCrypto
Chandan
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    For VS2013: SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS120COMNTOOLS% – Jake1164 Oct 01 '15 at 12:32
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    Whilst this may work in certain cases, **this is NOT a solution.** You need to make sure that any dependencies are compiled with the same compiler as Python was compiled with! – Daniel van Flymen Nov 19 '15 at 17:59
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    How about VS2017 ?! What should i set ?! – mahshid.r Jul 09 '18 at 07:28
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    @mahshid.r you can check the environment variables for VSxxxCOMNTOOLS and get the variable name, then set VS90COMNTOOLS variable to VSxxxCOMNTOOLS value. In CMD: 1. "SET VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS140COMNTOOLS%" 2. pip install pyCrypto – Oriel Cochavi May 28 '19 at 12:56
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In general

vcvarsall.bat is part of the Visual C++ compiler, you need that to install what you are trying to install. Don't even try to deal with MingGW if your Python was compiled with Visual Studio toolchain and vice versa. Even the version of the Microsoft tool chain is important. Python compiled with VS 2008 won't work with extensions compiled with VS 2010!

You have to compile PyCrypto with the same compiler that the version of Python was compiled with. Google for "Unable to find vcvarsall.bat" because that is the root of your problem, it is a very common problem with compiling Python extensions on Windows.

There is a lot of information and a lot to read to get this right on whatever system you are on with this link.

Beware using Visual Studio 2010 or not using Visual Studio 2008

As far as I know the following is still true. This was posted in the link above in June, 2010 referring to trying to build extensions with VS 2010 Express against the Python installers available on python.org.

Be careful if you do this. Python 2.6 and 2.7 from python.org are built with Visual Studio 2008 compilers. You will need to link with the same CRT (msvcr90.dll) as Python.

Visual Studio 2010 Express links with the wrong CRT version: msvcr100.dll.

If you do this, you must also re-build Python with Visual Studio 2010 Express. You cannot use the standard Python binary installer for Windows. Nor can you use any C/C++ extensions built with a different compiler than Visual Studio 2010 (Express).

Opinion: This is one reason I abandoned Windows for all serious development work for OSX!

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    Thanks for the insight. But good heavens, does it really have to be this tedious (frustration directed to the python gods, not yourself)? I just tried to install another package (mcrypt), both through setup.py and pip, both exiting out with errors. How in the world do Windows users install packages? Do they all have to download VS 2008 Express? (I have VS 2010, which I guess doesn't do the job). – Coldblackice Jul 10 '12 at 23:04
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    no, it doesn't; it isn't like this on OSX or Linux. In Windows you *can* install precompiled binaries for the default Python distributions *if you can find them*, the cryptography stuff is usually not available because of silly *export restrictions* in the USA. But do you really want to install *encryption* libraries that you didn't compile from source yourself???? How secure is that, I mean really how do you know they weren't compromised in some way? –  Jul 11 '12 at 04:15
  • "Opinion: This is one reason I abandoned Windows for all serious development work for OSX!" Yes... I downloaded python before I had any kind of C compiler on my device... Then later I got visual studio 2013 to do a little bit with visual basic... Then after that I got MinGW so that I could use GCC to compile C on windows. In short, while some of this may be my fault, I have no idea what development environment python would be trying to use. Fortunately, loads of python packages are available in binaries online, including pycrypto. – trevorKirkby Dec 05 '15 at 23:38
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PyCryptodome is an almost-compatible fork of PyCrypto with Windows wheels available on pypi.

You can install it with a simple:

pip install pycryptodome

The website includes instructions to build it from sources with the Microsoft compilers too.

SquareRootOfTwentyThree
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6

I have managed to get pycrypto to compile by using MinGW32 and MSYS. This presumes that you have pip or easy_install installed.

Here's how I did it:

1) Install MinGW32. For the sake of this explanation, let's assume it's installed in C:\MinGW. When using the installer, which I recommend, select the C++ compiler. MSYS should install with MinGW

2) Add c:\mingw\bin,c:\mingw\mingw32\bin,C:\MinGW\msys\1.0, c:\mingw\msys\1.0\bin and c:\mingw\msys\1.0\sbin to your %PATH%. If you aren't familiar, this article is very helpful.

3) From the search bar, run msys and the MSYS terminal will open. For those familiar with Cygwin, it works in a similar fashion.

4) From within the MSYS terminal pip install pycrypto should run without error after this.

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darnold0714
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  • It looks like your solution is lacking some steps. you might want to elaborate on this solution a little bit more. – Rusty Weber May 21 '14 at 00:54
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For Windows 7:

To install Pycrypto in Windows,

Try this in Command Prompt,

Set path=C:\Python27\Scripts (i.e path where easy_install is located)

Then execute the following,

easy_install pycrypto

For Ubuntu:

Try this,

Download Pycrypto from "https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycrypto"

Then change your current path to downloaded path using your terminal and user should be root:

Eg: root@xyz-virtual-machine:~/pycrypto-2.6.1#

Then execute the following using the terminal:

python setup.py install

It's worked for me. Hope works for all..

JayaPrakash
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  • I ran this on Windows 7 and the first time I got an error: "error: Setup script exited with error: Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat). Get it from http://aka.ms/vcpython27". Installed that, ran the command again and this time it worked. – arie Apr 01 '16 at 09:29
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For those of you looking for python 3.4 I found a git repo with an installer that just works. Here are the direct links for x64 and x32

user25064
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Try just using:

pip install pycryptodome

or:

pip install pycryptodomex

Source: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycryptodome

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It's possible to build PyCrypto using the Windows 7 SDK toolkits. There are two versions of the Windows 7 SDK. The original version (for .Net 3.5) includes the VS 2008 command-line compilers. Both 32- and 64-bit compilers can be installed.

The first step is to compile mpir to provide fast arithmetic. I've documented the process I use in the gmpy library. Detailed instructions for building mpir using the SDK compiler can be found at sdk_build

The key steps to use the SDK compilers from a DOS prompt are:

1) Run either vcvars32.bat or vcvars64.bat as appropriate.

2) At the prompt, execute "set MSSdk=1"

3) At the prompt, execute "set DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1"

This should allow "python setup.py install" to succeed assuming there are no other issues with the C code. But I vaaguely remember that I had to edit a couple of PyCrypto files to enable mpir and to find the mpir libraries but I don't have my Windows system up at the moment. It will be a couple of days before I'll have time to recreate the steps. If you haven't reported success by then, I'll post the PyCrypto steps. The steps will assume you were able to compile mpir.

I hope this helps.

casevh
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If you are on Windows and struggling with installing Pycrypcto just use the: pip install pycryptodome. It works like a miracle and it will make your life much easier than trying to do a lot of configurations and tweaks.

john
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So I install MinGW and tack that on the install line as the compiler of choice. But then I get the error "RuntimeError: chmod error".

This error "RuntimeError: chmod error" occurs because the install script didn't find the chmod command.

How in the world do I get around this?

Solution

You only need to add the MSYS binaries to the PATH and re-run the install script.

(N.B: Note that MinGW comes with MSYS so )

Example

For example, if we are in folder C:\<..>\pycrypto-2.6.1\dist\pycrypto-2.6.1>

C:\.....>set PATH=C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin;%PATH%
C:\.....>python setup.py install

Optional: you might need to clean before you re-run the script:

`C:\<..>\pycrypto-2.6.1\dist\pycrypto-2.6.1> python setup.py clean`
Bludzee
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  1. Go to "Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7" and continue based on "System Requirements" (this is what I did to put below steps together).

  2. Install setuptools (setuptools 6.0 or later is required for Python to automatically detect this compiler package) either by: pip install setuptools or download "Setuptools bootstrapping installer" source from, save this file somwhere on your filestystem as "ez_python.py" and install with: python ez_python.py

  3. Install wheel (wheel is recommended for producing pre-built binary packages). You can install it with: pip install wheel

  4. Open Windows elevated Command Prompt cmd.exe (with "Run as administrator") to install "Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7" for all users. You can use following command to do so: msiexec /i C:\users\jozko\download\VCForPython27.msi ALLUSERS=1 just use your own path to file: msiexec /i <path to MSI> ALLUSERS=1

  5. Now you should be able to install pycrypto with: pip install pycrypto

damian1baran
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My answer might not be related to problem mention here, but I had same problem with Python 3.4 where Crypto.Cipher wasn't a valid import. So I tried installing PyCrypto and went into problems.

After some research I found with 3.4 you should use pycryptodome.

I install pycryptodome using pycharm and I was good.

from Crypto.Cipher import AES

Virendra Patel
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This probably isn't the optimal solution but you might download and install the free Visual C++ Express package from MS. This will give you the C++ compiler you need to compile the PyCrypto code.

sizzzzlerz
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So I install MinGW and tack that on the install line as the compiler of choice. But then I get the error "RuntimeError: chmod error".

You need to install msys package under MinGW

enter image description here

and add following entries in your PATH env variable.

  • C:\MinGW\bin
  • C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin [This is where you will find chmod executable]

Then run your command from normal windows command prompt.

Aniket Thakur
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Step 1: Install Visual C++ 2010 Express from here.

(Do not install Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 )

Step 2: Remove all the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable packages from Control Panel\Programs and Features. If you don't do those then the install is going to fail with an obscure "Fatal error during installation" error.

Step 3: Install offline version of Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2010 (v7.1) from here. This is required for 64bit extensions. Windows has builtin mounting for ISOs like Pismo.

Step 4: You need to install the ISO file with Pismo File Mount Audit Package. Download Pismo from here

Step 5: Right click the downloaded ISO file and choose mount with Pismo. Thereafter, install the Setup\SDKSetup.exe instead of setup.exe.

Step 6a: Create a vcvars64.bat file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64 by changing directory to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio version\VC\ on the command prompt. Type command on the command prompt: cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio version\VC\r

Step 6b: To configure this Command Prompt window for 64-bit command-line builds that target x86 platforms, at the command prompt, enter: vcvarsall x86 Click here for more options.

Step 7: At the command prompt, install the PyCrypto by typing: C:\Python3X>pip install -U your_wh_file

Asubiaro Toluwase Victor
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I had Pycharm for python.

  1. Go to pycharm -> file -> setting -> project interpreter

  2. Click on +

  3. Search for "pycrypto" and install the package

Note: If you don't have "Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7" installed then it will prompt for installation, once installation finished try the above steps it should work fine.

Ivan
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RAKESH
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