Thanks for helping with this problem! I just tried on a win2000 Pro computer, and indeed, no problem... Then, on my WinXP laptop, I removed python, reinstalled it (2.3.4), next numarray (0.9), then matplotlib (0.54.2), the exact same windows installers that were used on the Win2000 computer, and same problem as before, crash on matplotlib.matlab import...Weird! I will try to perform the same installation on another WinXP computer, to be sure the problem is not related to incompatibilities with other softwares installed on my laptop, or some registery entries, and keep the list informed of the results of this test. Best regards, Greg.