So I have a situation where I need to make binary patches and then be able to apply them from within python. I found bsdiff which looks like a great algorithm and has a python extension module, but that extension module doesn't have a windows installer past Python 2.5 Alright, so having never even written C seriously, let alone attempted a python extension module, I set out to compile it myself. After a few hours of bashing my head against a DLL load error with MinGW32, I managed to get it compiled and built using the setup.py provided in the source of the project. However, upon importing the resulting bsdiff module, I get: ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application. Any advice?