Hello, sorry for the verbose question but I think an answer would need all these details. I used Blender 2.49 for a few years on my Mac with no problems and all good. I now have a new PC (Windows 7 Pro) and downloaded Blender to use, only to be very disappointed with the horrible Maya/Fisher Price lay out. No problem I will get an older version. I downloaded 2.49 and installed only to get “Compiled with Python version 2.6.2 import site failed..... some scripts may not run. Continuing happily”. I down loaded Python 2.6.2 and followed all instructions in the community forum post “ Getting Blender to find Python in Windows XP” . I still get the message even after re-installing Blender. I really am at my wits end with this as I have no interest in all the Path, Scripts stuff I just like making models and using them in Second Life. Please could somebody give me a step by step guide on how to get the older version to work with all scripts. I do not remember having any of these problems back in the day on my Mac? Thanks for your patience.

Sorry, no time for a long answer. The usual problem with blender not finding python is setting the environment variables wrong.

As long as python is installed in "the usual place", blender will find it. Try deleting any environment variables you set.