[/F] > do you have w9xpopen.exe in place? > > (iirc, mark just added the build files) Heh -- yes, and I wasn't building them. Now test_popen2 fails for a different reason: def _test(): teststr = "abc\n" print "testing popen2..." r, w = popen2('cat') ... Ain't no "cat" on Win98! The test is specific to Unix derivatives. Other than that, popen2 is working for me now. Mumble.