Python import error "DLL load failed" | Python

Question

I'm serving a Django app behind IIS6 web server.

The test server runs perfectly, but when running behind the web server a module failes to import I get this error:

Error loading pyodbc module: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found

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Just for the record the module is pyodbc

The site is served though isapi by using isapi-wsgi

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Any ideas? It would really make my day! :)

Answer 1

This error is a PITA: it is often caused by missing symbols in dll (because a dependent dll was not found, etc...). You should check the .pyd with dependency walker, or look into the windows log which may log such errors depending on your configuration.

Answer 2

I have recently been battling with setting up Django/Python on IIS 7 on Windows 2008 with MS SQL 2008. I bumped into the same problem as you did. I was using PyODBC-2.1.8. I compiled the modules from source. I used the mingw compiler to compile them from source. Nothing worked.

I then downgraded to PyODBC-2.1.7. And it worked! I used the binary available from the site for the Python 2.6 distribution (that is the version of Python I am using).

I hope this may help.