spawnv throws exception under Windows XP

[Chris Reuter]

I've been trying to start a particular external program from Python
using os.spawnv(). This works perfectly under Linux but under
Windows, it first runs the program, then throws an OSError exception
with the tuple (0, 'Error'):

spawnv(P_WAIT, 'c:/mctools/bin/mc', ['mc']) Archelon Tool Driver 3.09 2005/02/16
No input file was given.
[correct output snipped]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
OSError: (0, 'Error')

If I understand the error correctly, the zero is the errno value, so
it's throwing an exception to warn me that the program worked
correctly.

Running a trivial program that was compiled with the same compiler
(mingw) as "mc" worked fine.

This is Python 2.4.3, the standard Windows binaries at python.org,
BTW.

Has anyone experienced this problem before? Does anyone know what's
going on or if there's a workaround?

Thanks in advance,
--Chris
--
Chris Reuter http://www.blit.ca
"Fortunatel y, in my life, I have grown very good at convincing myself that
horrified looks are actually looks of affection. This makes dates much
easier." --Jeff Vogel, <20************ *************** @mb-cu.aol.com>