# Installation problem-cannot import pymc

**URL:** <https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [December 11, 2023, 8:13am UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450 "2023-12-11T08:13:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wptj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5f9b8f/32.png) [@wptj](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/wptj)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 8:13am UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/1 "2023-12-11T08:13:07Z")

</div>

Hi all, i installed pymc with conda create -c conda-forge -n pymc\_env “pymc\>=5” （window11）， while i got the following error “UnicodeDecodeError: ‘gbk’ codec can’t decode byte 0xba in position 2367: illegal multibyte sequence” when i import pymc.  
Anyone knows how to fix this? Thanks a lot.

Traceback (most recent call last):

Cell In[1], line 1  
import pymc as pm

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\pymc\__init_\_.py:49  
from pymc import \_version, gp, ode, sampling

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\pymc\gp\__init_\_.py:15  
from pymc.gp import cov, mean, util

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\pymc\gp\cov.py:51  
from pymc.pytensorf import constant\_fold

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\pymc\pytensorf.py:66  
from pymc.util import makeiter

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\pymc\util.py:20  
import arviz

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\__init_\_.py:33  
from .data import \*

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\data\__init_\_.py:2  
from .base import CoordSpec, DimSpec, dict\_to\_dataset, numpy\_to\_data\_array

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\data\base.py:20  
from … import **version** , utils

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\utils.py:667  
class HtmlTemplate:

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\utils.py:692 in HtmlTemplate  
\_, css\_style = \_load\_static\_files() # pylint: disable=protected-access

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\utils.py:662 in \_load\_static\_files  
return [

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\site-packages\arviz\utils.py:663 in   
importlib.resources.files(“arviz”).joinpath(fname).read\_text() for fname in STATIC\_FILES

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\Lib\pathlib.py:1059 in read\_text  
return f.read()

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ricardoV94](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.pymc.io/ricardov94/32/5775_2.png) [@ricardoV94](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/ricardoV94)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 10:19am UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/2 "2023-12-11T10:19:03Z")

</div>

Seems like an arviz error. Perhaps best to open an issue on their GitHub repo

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wptj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5f9b8f/32.png) [@wptj](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/wptj)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 3:00pm UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/3 "2023-12-11T15:00:49Z")

</div>

thanks

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ricardoV94](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.pymc.io/ricardov94/32/5775_2.png) [@ricardoV94](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/ricardoV94)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 3:02pm UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/4 "2023-12-11T15:02:57Z")

</div>

Sounds like this issue: [UnicodeDecodeError when i import arivz · Issue #2274 · arviz-devs/arviz · GitHub](https://github.com/arviz-devs/arviz/issues/2274)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wptj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5f9b8f/32.png) [@wptj](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/wptj)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 4:02pm UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/5 "2023-12-11T16:02:52Z")

</div>

As suggested, reinstalled the pymc with the arviz 0.15.1, i got another error “ImportError: DLL load failed while importing \_imaging:”  
Traceback (most recent call last):

Cell In[1], line 1  
import pymc as pm

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\pymc\__init_\_.py:49  
from pymc import \_version, gp, ode, sampling

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\pymc\gp\__init_\_.py:15  
from pymc.gp import cov, mean, util

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\pymc\gp\cov.py:51  
from pymc.pytensorf import constant\_fold

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\pymc\pytensorf.py:66  
from pymc.util import makeiter

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\pymc\util.py:20  
import arviz

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\arviz\__init_\_.py:8  
from matplotlib.colors import LinearSegmentedColormap

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\__init_\_.py:161  
from . import \_api, \_version, cbook, \_docstring, rcsetup

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\rcsetup.py:27  
from matplotlib.colors import Colormap, is\_color\_like

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib\colors.py:52  
from PIL import Image

File ~\anaconda3\envs\pymc\_env\_2312\Lib\site-packages\PIL\Image.py:103  
from . import \_imaging as core

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wptj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5f9b8f/32.png) [@wptj](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/wptj)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 4:56pm UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/6 "2023-12-11T16:56:31Z")

</div>

solved by changing the version of Pillow

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![QwqJunxing](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.pymc.io/qwqjunxing/32/7989_2.png) [@QwqJunxing](https://discourse.pymc.io/u/QwqJunxing)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2024, 2:06pm UTC](https://discourse.pymc.io/t/installation-problem-cannot-import-pymc/13450/7 "2024-04-04T14:06:16Z")

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Hi, there is the same problems when I import pymc, could you give a more detailed solving method that fix this import problem, thx!