[Python] pip install fails with "connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED]...

I am very new to Python and trying to > pip install linkchecker on Windows 7. Some notes:

• pip install is failing no matter the package. For example, > pip install scrapy also results in the SSL error.
• Vanilla install of Python 3.4.1 included pip 1.5.6. The first thing I tried to do was install linkchecker. Python 2.7 was already installed, it came with ArcGIS. python and pip were not available from the command line until I installed 3.4.1.
• > pip search linkchecker works. Perhaps that is because pip search does not verify the site's SSL certificate.
• I am in a company network but we do not go through a proxy to reach the Internet.
• Each company computer (including mine) has a Trusted Root Certificate Authority that is used for various reasons including enabling monitoring TLS traffic to https://google.com. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Here are the contents of my pip.log after running pip install linkchecker:

Downloading/unpacking linkchecker
Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/: connection error: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='pypi.python.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/ (Caused by <class 'http.client.CannotSendRequest'>: Request-sent)
Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/
URLs to search for versions for linkchecker:
* https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement linkchecker
Cleaning up...
Removing temporary dir C:\Users\jcook\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_jcook...
No distributions at all found for linkchecker
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
status = self.run(options, args)
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run
requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 1177, in prepare_files
url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 277, in find_requirement
raise DistributionNotFound('No distributions at all found for %s' % req)
pip.exceptions.DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for linkchecker


For this error message in your own code (using urllib, urllib2, requests etc. to attempt a connection using SSL), see urllib and "SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED" Error .

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