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 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.