Apparently this issue has happened to some people for few years now, but not everyone. I can only suspect each update is not the same for each person, which is a whole rabbit hole by itself. So it’s possible that any update you receive (which is forced since Windows 10), your installed Python may break. If you don’t apply the below change, Windows will just claim Python is not found and suggest you to install a new one from the Windows Store.
What happens is that Windows have broken how the PATH environment variable works, when they tried to make certain commands on the command line or search to immediately throw you into the Windows Store. Before it used to be that if your python.exe folder path was in the PATH Environment variable, you were set. Now you have to also make sure the Windows Store doesn’t get in the way.
Solution is to:
Go to “Settings” → in its search bar, type “manage app execution aliases”, uncheck “App Installer - python.exe” and “App installer - python3.exe”
This problem has bugged some people since 2020, Python is one of the most popular programming language, and Windows Store is garbage which nobody uses. Yet Microsoft has not fixed this for 3 years, so I don’t expect them to fix it in the future.
Here’s some search terms to make this solution easier to find:
“windows python not found after update”
“windows ignores python from path”
“windows doesn’t find python but it is in path”