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Python inside a virtualenv is broken (Django)

TL;DR - Microsoft Store Apps are broken (0 bytes), hence the Python interpreter is unable to create process and run "Python" inside virtualenv, I failed to follow numerous explanations of how to change virtualenv path for Python.
Recently, without any changes to my computer/environment, an issue started occurring when executing (also tried python3, which brings the same):
python manage.py runserver
This brought back the following issue:
Unable to create process using
'"C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.10_qbz5n2kfra8p0\python.exe"'
As I dug deeper, I realized that all of the apps installed under this folder are 0 bytes, hence they are completed broken, all of a sudden.
Therefore I figured it's not an issue with Django, rather the python itself.
I tried changing the virtualenv path for Python.exe, instead of using WindowsApps version, I installed the original Python from the original website.
I failed to do so, multiple times.
I tried: "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4757178/how-do-you-set-your-pythonpath-in-an-already-created-virtualenv/47184788#47184788" - Adding the path inside "activate" and "activate.bat", as
set PYTHONPATH="C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\python.exe"
And the issue persists.
I tried every solution/article I found in regards to the issue I have. Many of them claim a simple result, whereas the rest claim a complete refactor is required.
Even downloading from Microsoft store is broken, it always fails.
Since I'm unable to remove the broken apps, and I wasn't able to find a way to change the virtualenv Python interpreter, I am here, asking for your assistance.
Thanks in advance,

Since you have installed python from python.org, ensure that it has been properly added to the PATH and you're not inadvertently using the windows store version.
Open command prompt
Execute where python to check which python your system is using.
If you're only seeing the WindowsApps version of python listed in the output of where command, then python installer apparently didn't add the location to PATH, so you'll need to manually add it yourself.
Also, if you're not restricted to use virtualenv, you can give conda a try.

As I began rebuilding, I figured it out.
When building a virtualenv, the python I used was directing to:
"C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.10_qbz5n2kfra8p0\python.exe"'
Python interpreter is saved as the "PATH" to execute python.
Since my Python interpreter from Microsoft Store went broke, I was unable to execute python inside the virtual environment.
Venv configures a file called:
pyvenv.cfg
This is how the virtual environment knows what Python interpreter to use.
Inside it, the first line states:
home = C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.10_qbz5n2kfra8p0\
Therefore, we just need to re-configure it to the new path of Python interpreter:
home = C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310
And it worked for me.
Thanks for everyone's assistant, glad it's done.

pip looking in wrong folder

My issue requires some backstory.
I was having some troubles with pip, so I reinstalled Python. After the reinstall pip began to work, but Pycharm, my IDE, could no longer find Python. When I reinstalled Python it created a new folder for itself (Python310), but Pycharm kept looking in the old folder (Python39). I couldn't figure out how to get Pycharm to look in the new folder. Even deleting and reinstalling it did nothing.
So, I renamed Python310 to Python39 and changed the PATH. Now Pycharm can find Python. But pip has developed a new and exciting error. When I try to use it I get the following message:
Fatal error in launcher: Unable to create process using '"C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\python.exe" "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts\pip.exe" install numpy': The system cannot find the file specified.
If I read this correctly pip is still trying to look in Python310. Would you please tell me what I need to do to get pip to looking in the right place?

So, to start. You don't fix this by renaming the folder where the interpreter resides. Even if that worked, it's not a fix. The name will say one thing, but it's actual version, compatible libraries, and anything else tied to the version number would be incorrect.
If you take a close look at the error message from pip, it tells us what's wrong.
Fatal error in launcher: Unable to create process using '"C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\python.exe" "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts\pip.exe" install numpy': The system cannot find the file specified.
You renamed the directory, so your IDE can find it, but pip and everything else using the Python interpreter is still configured to look in the Python39 directory to find it.
The problem you are having is that your IDE, PyCharm, needs to be configured for your project. You have to tell it where the Python interpreter is. The simple solution, you can rename your your Python folder back to it's original state, and add it to your project.
Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the project Settings/Preferences and go to Project | Python Interpreter. Click the Add Interpreter link next to the list of the available interpreters.
Expand the list of the available interpreters and click the Show All link.
Select the target interpreter.
In your case, look for the one with this file path: "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\python.exe"
I would recommend going one step futher and create an interpreter in a virtual environment. Especially if you are interested in Python beyond a very casual hobby. They are unavoidable.
This link is a good source and can help you with this:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/configuring-python-interpreter.html#interpreter
There, you will find screenshots that follow the steps I listed above. There are also detailed instructions on how to create and add a new interpreter in a virtual environment. The relevant headings are as follows:
Configure a Python interpreter
Python interpreters in PyCharm
Setting an existing Python interpreter
Creating a new Python interpreter
The rest of the content is great as well, and may help answer questions you didn't know you had.

try to uninstall all of the existing python versions. and install it again. using any of application allow you to delete most of files, so to prevent error when re-install .

Option 1:
delete and reinstall again. and then when creating a project it should prompt you to pick a basic interpreter, choose python310 or whatever version you're using.
Option 2:
use a different IDE.

Python standalone .py or external import of module? Is this really as hard as it seems?

Situation: I've installed a bunch of packages with pip. I've now written code using these packages.
I have a myscript.py
My friend is on windows.
has python installed.
He has no packages.
He cannot get any packages.
He has pip
He will never be able to use the internet to get more packages everything must be hand delivered.
In fact about 10 minutes after he runs whatever I give him, he formats his machine and it's gone.
How do I take myscript.py and give it to him on a USB stick so that he can copy the file myscript.py onto his computer and run it?
I thought Pipenv would do it but it looks like it just creates a LIST of packages to download from the internet. (a very well defined list... but a list not the actual files needed to run something. Do I understand it correctly?
Right now I'm giving him .exe made with py2exe. This isn't very elegant considering he has python already.
tl;dr how do I give a python script .py to an end user that doesn't have the internet?

You can package everything up in a virtual environment and give him the complete environment necessary to run the script. You can read about this at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Python/Virtualenv and an IDE like PyCharm will help you create such an environment easily.
It's actually a good thing to learn about and do anyway.

location of pip.conf file

I am working on a system that has to work on both Windows and Linux. Its uses Python's venv module for everything related to Python. I need to create a pip.conf file to activate the pickup of my personal ~/.pip/pip.conf to point it to our internal PyPi server instead of the global one. I also need to be able to hard code the values right into the venv's pip.conf for other scenarios. I can't figure out where the file should be placed.
In short, sometimes I need it to use my personal pip.conf, sometimes I need it to use the venv's pip.conf, on both Linux and Windows (my machine is Windows).
The folder structure of my venv after creation is this:
myproject/build/venv/Include
/Lib
/Scripts
Where does the pip.conf go? I keep reading in the documentation %virtual_env%/pip.conf but when you don't know what the value of virtual_env, its a pretty useless statement.
My guess is myproject/build/venv/pip.conf, am I right?
edit**
Well, I was wrong. Putting it in the root of the venv folder didn't work. I'm going to keep trying, problem is to redeploy this app after each code change takes an hour.

The easiest way to locate the folder is by running the following command in the cmd.
pip config -v list
That will result with the paths that pip is searching in to find the config file. There are different paths for global, user, site. And you can even add one for you specific needs.

According to pip user guide https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/user_guide/#config-file it's pip.ini under Windows, not pip.conf.
It should be at the root of your virtual environnement, right where you tried with pip.conf, and takes precedence over your personal %APPDATA%/pip/pip.ini.

On Windows, the configuration is stored at C:\Users\<username>\.virtualenvs\<virtual env name>\pip.ini
Ref: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/user_guide/#config-file

What worked for me to obtain all the config files was
pip config debug
(It seems to do what pip config -v list did before)

Install Python modules on Shared hosting virtualenv

Experimenting with using python in a virtualenv on my shared hosting account. Based on this dreamhost tutorial have installed pip and another module or two (echonest, remix), but trying to install numpy the long list of errors starts with non-existing path in 'numpy/distutils': 'site.cfg'
/bin/sh: svnversion: command not found.
The virtualenv instructions I read say, "make sure that your path gives preference to ~/local/bin to /usr/bin so that your "local" copy of Python runs, and that your scripts refer to that location."
Does that suggest to make a link somewhere that points calls to /usr/bin/ to ~/local/bin?
Is the solution to find the install package and edit the paths in it's setup.py file?

this is referring to the linux environment variable $PATH which lists the directories in which to look for executables for commands when you don't specify an absolute path. this will contain a list of comma separated paths eg:
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
You just need to make sure that the /usr/local... stuff comes first (left) like this:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

Are you sure you're running ~/local/bin/python when running setup.py?
One virtualenv-specific thing you can do is source ~/local/bin/activate, which automatically sets your virtualenv to take preference over everything else in your path. It only works until you log out of your terminal instance or run deactivate

I'm seeing confusion in the comments--- between "local" and "your virtualenv". And there is a parallel problem with $PATH. Is there just one path issue? No... there are two.
True, my own analogous efforts on a different shared-hosting account are ultimately crashing too, but I'm further along and I appear to have some things figured out. The confusion here partly comes about because there are two Dreamhost tutorials that are linked to in the question, but the authors of those two wiki chapters didn't make any effort to integrate the two.
And in the second tutorial on Python the mistake is made of introducing the discussion of the local directory in the virtualenv section though it's only really explained in the next section on building your own Python. And the discussion on building your own isn't complete regarding what to do about $PATH. You don't need to build your own Python or have a local directory just to use virtualenv.
It may even be detrimental. The language at this official virtualenv page should fill you with despair, as it shows no effort at clarity. I think that it means that mod_python and mod_wsgi, either of which you must be using for your Flask experiment, don't use any Python that you might come up with--- they use their own Python interpreter, the system's version. But virtualenv, the program, also puts a Python interpreter inside your virtual environment (the interpreter that you will use to do installs and also ultimately to run flask if you let it). The point of the warning from the virtualenv folks is that you can't run with two different interpreters in the same server process. They show you the workaround.
But I have digressed. The second, Python tutorial instructs about building your own local Python, in the directory /home/yourusername/local. A more complete, yet succinct discussion is to be found at Sugath Mudali's Blog.
Your virtualenv should occupy a second directory, which I'll call yourvirtenv. Alongside ~/local should be OK.
So, per Sugath Mudali's helpful instructions, you need to execute export PATH=/home/yourusername/local/bin:$PATH, which puts /home/yourusername/local/bin at the front of your $PATH, which you can confirm with "echo $PATH". Once you've done that, whenever you use "python" in your shell you'll be using the Python that you just installed, whose path you just put first.
Having done that, if you then cd into to your virtualenv source folder (somewhere in /home/youruserhame) and run "python virtualenv.py /home/youruserhame/yourvirtenv" it will create a directory ~/yourvirtenv, into which it will put a copy of the interpreter of your local Python. Generally it will not only be a distinct copy but it will differ even as to version from that of your system, which is at /usr/bin/ as /usr/bin/python ("usr" here is not you but is the oddly-named directory of the entire shared Linux machine to which no unprivileged user such as you has access, into which program binaries can be installed, by the privileged, for system-wide use).
Note that the Dreamhost Python wiki says "DreamHost has begun upgrading servers to Python 2.6.6 as of February 2012." Version 2.6 is adequate for virtualenv and practically everything else. So I would question the need to build your own Python in your case. (Note that Dreamhost even suggests that you should try to forget about it entirely.)
Anyway, on to the second PATH deal, as limasxgoesto0 noted, once you run virtualenv.py and have thus created myvirtenv, if you're still in the /home/myusername user-root directory you run source myvirtenv/bin/source. That puts /home/myusername/myvirtenv/bin at the front of the path--- until you later simply run "deactivate" (no source in front of it). That is all that activate does.
Now, when you return days later and go back to work consider this: export PATH=/home/yourusername/local/bin:$PATH has evaporated. It's not permanent; goes away when the shell is closed. To make it permanent you have to add that statement to .bash_profile. Here's mine:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
export PATH
export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/myusername/local/lib
unset USERNAME
I found it necessary to reassert the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in order to make sqlite3 function, even though I had compiled sqlite3 and done that export prior to building Python.
Note that this .bash_profile invokes .bashrc. Depending on how Dreamhost has arranged things, you may have to put these exports in .bashrc.
Likewise, when you return to the shell myvirtenv will not be found to still be activated even if you never typed-in "deactivate". You only activate it temporarily in the shell to install stuff inside it and to start your server or run some other program that you've installed. Thereafter, the installed stuff knows to use the Python interpreter that has been copied to myvirtenv. To make that not happen, to make the stuff run off of the system Python interpreter you have to do what the aforementioned official virtualenv docs on mod_python, mod_wsgi say.
It looks as though this may be necessary even if you have not built your own Python, because otherwise you would have two Python interpreters running in the same server process. I am however sketchy on this. Flask is, like Django, a Python framework. An A2 Hosting tutorial--- they use Phusion Passerger too--- may be of interest. On their site search for "Django shared" and the tutorial will come up on top. Note that Chris C.'s instructions there tell you to use the --python=/path/to/python switch. In your case that could be /home/myusername/local/bin/python if you have locally installed Python, but in their case it's /usr/bin/python2.6. I think that their point is they don't want to get tech-support tickets from customers on problems caused by upgrades to their system python2.6 that could break your site. So that --python switch (-p directory is the short form; --python=directory is the long form) is to freeze the Python that your app will be using, to avoid such problems. It does so by copying all of the Python into your virtual environment, not just the interpreter.
I don't understand how they are avoiding the problem of mod_wsgi and the customer's apps using two different interpreters, but maybe that's what Phusion Passenger helps out with.