John's Computer Journal

MinGW doesn't work well on Vista without adding some extra environment variables. The following environment variables will allow gcc to find its sub programs, the standard include paths and libraries when linking.

MinGW Variables

GCC_EXEC_PREFIX=c:\mingw
PATH=%GCC_EXEC_PREFIX%\libexec\gcc\mingw32\3.4.2;%PATH%
PATH=c:\mingw\bin;%PATH%

MinGW must be installed to the root directory. For example c:\tools\mingw will not work. It must be c:\mingw.

mSYS Variables

PATH=c:\msys\1.0\bin;%PATH%
HOME=%HOMEPATH%

Vista will force a User Access Control (UAC) message to elevate privileges whenever it detects a program with the words setup, install, or patch in the filename or description. However when a program is run from the command line, Vista will not bring up the (UAC) message and just deny access to the executable. To get around the problem make sure to work with elevated privileges when performing a make install or when patching.

Refferences

• Giles, Aaron. "Solving the Windows Vista Build Issues."