I can't prove it since Python gives no further information than a
procedure cannot be found, but using a bunch of other tools I think this
may be due at least to the use of localtime() and it not being present
in the msvcr90.dll but is in the vc version 7 dlls which is why earlier
versions of Python have no issue.

If the above is the case then I have no idea where the actual underlying
cause lies.  Is MinGW missing header information that should mangle
localtime() to one of the other variants used by msvc (_s suffix, _
prefix, 32/64 in there somewhere)?  Is the Python header causing issues?

Attached is a trivial extension providing the issue with localtime.