Open a the new commandline window, and type "bootstrap.bat mingw" in the boost souce root dir to build the b2.exe and bjam.exe.
Yes adding "mingw" to the bootrap.bat invocation seems to be the trick. To summarize explicitly the differences between what the docs say and what works: What the docs say to do: add MinGW\bin to PATH (not actually in boost docs but reasonably obvious from MinGW install instructions) cd BOOST_ROOT\tools\build\v2 bootstrap.bat b2 install --prefix=<some build dir> add <some build dir>\bin to PATH cd BOOST\ROOT b2 --build-dir=<some build dir> toolset=gcc --build-type=complete stage What works: add MinGW\bin to PATH cd BOOST_ROOT bootstrap.bat mingw b2 toolset=gcc --prefix=<some build dir> There is obviously a lot of confusion here. Will someone fix the documentation? Will someone explain why the docs say to do things in the more convoluted way? regards, kjoppy