On Windows, running "import tensorflow" generates No module named "_pywrap_tensorflow" error

Question

On Windows, TensorFlow reports either or both of the following errors after executing an import tensorflow statement:

• No module named "_pywrap_tensorflow"
• DLL load failed.

Answer 1

The problem was the cuDNN Library for me - for whatever reason cudnn-8.0-windows10-x64-v6.0 was NOT working - I used cudnn-8.0-windows10-x64-v5.1 - ALL GOOD!

My setup working with Win10 64 and the Nvidia GTX780M:

• Be sure you have the lib MSVCP140.DLL by checking your system/path - if not get it here
• Run the windows installer for python 3.5.3-amd64 from here - DO NOT try newer versions as they probably won't work
• Get the cuDNN v5.1 for CUDA 8.0 from here - put it under your users folder or in another known location (you will need this in your path)
• Get CUDA 8.0 x86_64 from here
• Set PATH vars as expected to point at the cuDNN libs and python (the python path should be added during the python install)
• Make sure that ".DLL" is included in your PATHEXT variable
• If you are using tensorflow 1.3 then you want to use cudnn64_6.dll github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/7705

If you run Windows 32 be sure to get the 32 bit versions of the files mentioned above.

Answer 2

In my case the "cudnn64_6.dll" file in the /bin folder had to be renamed to "cudnn64_5.dll" for the error to go away. I easily spent two hours to figure this out, and I followed the official install guide to the letter. This is true for installation via pip (officially supported) and conda (community supported).