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> 1) The MSSdk environment variable is not set by lastest SDK's 
> SetEnv.cmd anymore, but distutils still check for it.
This is intentional. Older SDKs still set the variable, so there
is nothing wrong with checking it.
> 2) I have also install MSVC 2010 Express Edition, and its 
> vcvarsall.bat can't be found.
MSVC 2010 is not supported for building Python 2.7 extension modules.
> a) Can i use different version of MSVC from which python is built for 
> extension development ?
No. Because of the way the MSVCRT works, this can cause crashes.
> b) Can i use mingw compiler to develop extension for the pre-built 
> windows binary python ?
Yes, in principle. In practice, it may fail because of gcc limitations.