On Windows, running “import tensorflow” generates No module named “_pywrap_tensorflow” error

Question

On Windows, TensorFlow reports either or both of the following errors after executing an import tensorflow statement:

• No module named \"_pyw

Answer 1

For Those Running on Older Hardware:

You may get this same error due to having an older CPU using tensorflow-gpu 1.6.

If your cpu was made before 2011, then your max tensorflow-gpu version is 1.5.

Tensorflow 1.6 requires AVX instructions on your cpu. Verified here: Tensorflow Github docs

AVX enabled CPUs: Wiki AVX CPUs

What I did in my conda environment for tensorflow:

pip install --ignore-installed --upgrade tensorflow-gpu==1.5