right... so I removed line 134: rm -f lib/libraw.a
from the Makefile.mingw and it finished as expected. Not sure why the rm throws an error. Running it again throws no error even with the rm sinc the 'lib/libraw.a' then exists. Windows... :-/

thanks for the help. Now I'm working on windows defender accepting the compiled *.exe and NOT starting thread alerts everytime they run. Only happens to compiled ones. I'll get it done.

thanks again. Any usage questions I'll post elsewhere.