cx_Oracle: ImportError: DLL load failed: This application has failed

Question

Here\'s what I did:

1. I\'m on Windows XP SP3
2. I already had Python 2.7.1 installed.
3. I downloaded instantclient-basic-nt-11.2.0.3.0.zip

Answer 1

Had this issue also, and it seems importing cx_Oracle (at least as of 5.1.2) will fail (with the same error) if you have any invalid/unreachable UNC paths in front of Oracle in the PATH environment variable.

Fixing the UNC path (which was unrelated to Oracle) resolved the problem.