On second thought, first try for _winreg, and then winreg. Only if both

fail do we try for win32api/win32con.  If *those* both fail, then we don't
have registry access.  Phew!

msvccompiler.py

@@ -20,7 +20,11 @@ from distutils.ccompiler import \
 
 _can_read_reg = 0
 try:
-    import _winreg
+    try:
+        import _winreg
+    except ImportError:
+        import winreg                   # for pre-2000/06/29 CVS Python
+
     _can_read_reg = 1
     hkey_mod = _winreg