Survival guide for py2 diehards
| Ver | Dropped on | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 3.x | 2.1 | PEP 11 |
| 95 | 2.6 | |
| 98 | 2.6 | |
| Me | 2.6 | |
| NT4 | 2.6 | |
| 2000 | 3.4 | |
| XP | 3.5 | BPO-23451 |
| Vista | 3.9 | BPO-32592 |
| 7 | 3.9 |
According to PEP 11, Vista support should have been dropped in 3.7, but wasn't. Similarly, Windows 8.0 support should have been dropped in 3.9, but wasn't.
MSYS2 provided up-to-date py3 for some time when it still supported Windows 7. Some time between September and November 2024 (which was my two final times of updating MSYS2 packages on Windows 7), MSYS2 discontinued support for Windows 7. The update in November made all binaries incompatible with Windows 7. If someone still has a working MSYS2 environment (i.e. wasn't updated since November 2024), newer Python 3 might be usable in MSYS2. My broken MSYS2 installation has 3.9 and 3.10. I'd guess that means Windows integration wouldn't be usable though.
As of March 2025, PyPy's requirement is "any windows 64-bit" [sic]. It also requires vcredist 2015. Since the first x64 version of Windows is XP Pro x64 (based on Server 2003 x64), vcredist 2015 actually doesn't make the requirement stricter. This should give Windows XP access to 3.6 ~ 3.11.
The last version of PyPy to provide a 32-bit Windows build is 7.3.3, with Python 3.6, 3.7 and 2.7. This gives 32-bit XP access to 3.6 and 3.7.
Python 2.7 for Windows 95/98/Me and Windows NT 3.51/4.0