As I wrote in http://bugs.python.org/issue19066, on Windows execv() is equivalent to

    os.spawnv(os.P_NOWAIT, ...)
    os._exit(0)

This means that control is returned to cmd when the child process *starts* (and afterwards you have cmd and the child connected to the same console).

On Unix control is returned to the shell only once the child process *ends*.

Although it might be less memory efficient, you would actually get something closer to Unix behaviour by replacing os.execv(...) with

    sts = os.spawnv(os.P_WAIT, ...)
    _exit(sts)

or

    sts = subprocess.call(...)
    _exit(sts)

This is why I said that execv() is useless on Windows and that you should just use subprocess instead.