Laura, I think what you want should actually be more-or-less doable in IDLE.

The main routine that starts IDLE should be able to detect if it starts 
correctly (something unlikely to happen if a significant stdlib module is 
shadowed), watch for an attribute error of that form and try to determine if 
shadowing is the cause, and if so, reissue a saner error message.

The subprocess/firewall error is occurring because the ‘string’ problem in your 
example isn’t being hit right away so a few startup things already are 
happening. The point where we’re showing that error (as a result of a timeout) 
should be able to check as per the above that IDLE was able to start alright, 
and if not, change or ignore the timeout error.

There’ll probably be some cases (depending on exactly what gets shadowed) that 
may be difficult to get to work, but it should be able to handle most things.

Mark

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