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Well, Martin is right, you know:  if you're not defining 
_DEBUG, and not letting MSVC define it either, then neither 
will pyconfig.h define Py_DEBUG, and it gets harder and 
harder to believe that what you're reporting is the full 
truth.

Perhaps you could attach a tiny example, along with the 
MSVC project file, or Makefile, you use.  It may well be 
academic, though, as it's *normal* for _DEBUG to get 
defined under MSVC in a debug build (and whether or not you 
add it explicitly -- as Martin implied, you would have had 
to explicitly remove _DEBUG from the MSVC auto-generated 
list of preprocesser debug-build #defines).

In answer to one of your earlier questions, PYTHONPATH is 
not ignored after a debug link.  I understand that you 
believe it is, but I expect that's another illusion due to 
something you haven't told us-- or not discovered --yet.  
Perhaps you're linking with the wrong system libraries?  
Python requires the multithreaded libraries.