If your crash report details indicate the Common Controls DLL as culprit, I have a fix that will probably work. As mentioned in http://morison.biz/technotes/articles/55 I built debug versions of python and wxwidgets and found a conflict between the python and the wxwidgets loading of this DLL. I also tried patching in the supposed fix from the wxwidgets trunk, and didn't see it fixing the problem (though that was over a month ago, and it may really be fixed in the trunk now, I haven't checked.)
In any case, that link has _my_ hack for to workaround the problem, included below, until the release code has it fixed.
*Disclaimer: You're mileage may vary!*
cd c:\Python26
copy python.exe python-backup.exe
copy pythonw.exe pythonw-backup.exe
mt -inputresource:python.exe;#1 -manifest \PathToWxPySrc\src\winxp.vc9.manifest -outputresource:python.exe;#1
mt -inputresource:pythonw.exe;#1 -manifest \PathToWxPySrc\src\winxp.vc9.manifest -outputresource:pythonw.exe;#1