Is this...

…the shocking ignorance of a n00b? I tried reading some of the other threads to see if I could find an answer, but I didn’t see anything that was similar, so here goes (please bear with me). I downloaded 2.48 for the first time (for a machine running WinD’OHs 2000, for reasons beyond my control). I was given a prompt that said I needed to download Python, as I didn’t have it installed, and a link to python.org. I clicked the link, followed the instructions, downloaded and installed Python. Well, when I went to start Blender, I got the following message:

OK, what did I do wrong? When I go to my program files on my hard drive, Python is there.
Did I download the wrong version? Please forgive my ignorance, and also please forgive me if I missed the answer here somewhere.
I appreciate any help I can get.

Oh and if this is posted in the wrong section, I throw myself on the mercy of the moderators and humbly ask one of them to put it in the correct place.

Thanks!

is the folder called python26 is so uninstall and then install python 2.5.2

Had the same message when I installed Blender 2.4/python25. Re-booted a couple of times and now python works fine.

Sorry about that, typo I meant installing Blender 2.8/python25

OK, thanks. Yeah, I somehow got 26.