After compiling the latest Fossil source for Windows using the instructions on the Cookbook wiki section, opening an existing Fossil or creating a new one results in the error message "This application has failed to start because zlib1.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem." It will not create the repo or open it.

The source was compiled on a Windows XP Pro SP3 machine.

Here's what I did:
  *  Uninstalled both MingW and MSYS, then made another fresh install of both.
  *  Downloaded the latest source from zlib.net, used its Makefile.gcc to build "libz.a"
  *  Copied libz.a over to the "lib" folder inside MingW
  *  Downloaded the Zip file from the latest Fossil leaf and extracted it into a separate folder
  *  Mounted the folder in the bash shell and compiled the Fossil source using the same Makefile.w32 included with it.

Now it works fine.

"zlib1.dll not found" error after building latest leaf