title: Process to convert simple Python script into Windows executable
body: <p>I wrote a script that will help a Windows user in her daily life. I want to simply send her the .exe and not ask her to install python, dlls or have to deal with any additional files.</p>
  
  <p>I've read plenty of the stackoverflow entries regarding compiling Python scripts into executable files. I am a bit confused as there are many options but some seem dated (no updates since 2008) and none were simple enough for me not to be asking this right now after a few hours spent on this. </p>
  
  <p>I'm hoping there's a better, up-to-date way to do this.</p>
  
  <p>I looked into:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://code.google.com/p/pylunch/" rel="noreferrer">pylunch</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.py2exe.org/" rel="noreferrer">py2exe</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://cx-freeze.sourceforge.net/" rel="noreferrer">cx_Freeze</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://svn.pythonmac.org/py2app/py2app/trunk/doc/index.html" rel="noreferrer">py2app</a> (only for Mac)</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.pyinstaller.org/" rel="noreferrer">pyinstaller</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/bbfreeze/" rel="noreferrer">bbfreeze</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>but either I couldn't get them to work or couldn't understand how to get the result I need. The closest I got was with py2exe but it still gave me the MSVCR71.dll</p>
  
  <p>I would appreciate a step-by-step answer as I was also unable to follow some of the tweaking answers here that require some prior understanding of how to use py2exe or some of the other tools.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using Python 2.5 as one of the modules is only available for that version.</p>