Im using version 2.6.20 of libxml2. After lots of fighting with this I remembered that Bloodshed's DevC++ uses mingw and had a libxml2 devpak that worked. so i grabbed a copy of DevC++ and their devpak for libxml2 (which was also version 2.6.20) copied the dll, headers, and library over to my main mingw setup and both XML-LibXML-Common 0.13 and XML-LibXML 1.58 built perfectly for me, all test past and appears to be working. Thanks to everyone for their help.