Install Python on Windows without Admin access

Published: 2020-07-13

Sometimes you need to install developer tools on a Windows machine, but you don’t have Admin access. How to get around this, you say? Well, instead of running an installer, you download the binaries you need then add them to your PATH.

# Python version 3.8.4

Download a zip of the 64-bit Windows binary https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.4/python-3.8.4-embed-amd64.zip
Create folder %USERPROFILE%\bin\python, then extract the zip contents into this folder

Open Command Prompt and set environment variables for your account

 setx PYTHON_HOME "%USERPROFILE%\bin\python\python-3.8.4-embed-amd64"
 setx PATH "%PYTHON_HOME%;%PATH%"

Restart Command Prompt. Changes made by setx will only be picked up in new instances of Command Prompt
Confirm installation
```
 python --version
```