Please see my prior post on how to Setup virtualenv on Windows. Open PowerShell, then enter the following commands: cd C:\Python27 .\env_tornado\Scripts\activate.bat .\Scripts\easy_install.exe pip pip.exe install tornado -E .\env_tornado If you want to install in the global site packages, then skip pip above and use: .\Scripts\easy_install.exe tornado That’s it. Time to start writing code.