PowerCLI 13.4 incompatibility with Python 3.12 on Windows

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• On a Windows system, Python 3.12 unparses paths with colons into ///// instead of ///. 
• This causes certain checks to fail and not work as expected
• Due to this export of ESXi image as a zip bundle using PowerCLI 13.4 fails

Environment

• PowerCLI 13.4 with Python 3.12 on Windows
• PowerCLI ImageBuilder

Resolution

• Use another Python version (3.11 is preferable) OR use PowerCLI version 13.3 which has the workaround for the python 3.12 issue