diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 8f373be59a3019d8c66b94d3f7cd4cfb6472bdc0..c221766d4a666176e285ad9fa65a4133153eadbb 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -10,6 +10,9 @@ Daniel S (17 Nov 2007)
 - Michal Marek made the test suite remember what test servers that fail to
   start so that subsequent tries are simply skipped.
 
+- Andres Garcia made the examples build fine on Windows (mingw + msys) when
+  the lib was built staticly.
+
 Daniel S (16 Nov 2007)
 - Ates Goral identified a problem in http.c:add_buffer_send() when a debug
   callback was used, as it could wrongly pass on a bad size for the outgoing
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 2be64854116548cc212f1a54c387b3e5ee35e0d3..70566cfbbc4866058bc25207dedb8239bc73f1dc 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -174,6 +174,7 @@ case $host in
 esac
 AC_MSG_RESULT($mimpure)
 AM_CONDITIONAL(MIMPURE, test x$mimpure = xyes)
+AM_CONDITIONAL(STATICLIB, false)
 
 AC_MSG_CHECKING([if we need BUILDING_LIBCURL])
 case $host in
@@ -185,6 +186,7 @@ case $host in
     then
       AC_DEFINE(CURL_STATICLIB, 1, [when not building a shared library])
       AC_MSG_RESULT(yes)
+      AM_CONDITIONAL(STATICLIB, true)
     else
       AC_MSG_RESULT(no)
     fi
diff --git a/docs/examples/Makefile.am b/docs/examples/Makefile.am
index 9127c3d5ac84eb53e2b422a9e7be73fbc9221f35..73383131e1064255893d7e75eca5d04ee529078d 100644
--- a/docs/examples/Makefile.am
+++ b/docs/examples/Makefile.am
@@ -9,7 +9,13 @@ EXTRA_DIST = README Makefile.example makefile.dj $(COMPLICATED_EXAMPLES)
 INCLUDES = -I$(top_srcdir)/include
 
 LIBDIR = $(top_builddir)/lib
-CPPFLAGS = -DCURL_NO_OLDIES
+
+if STATICLIB
+# we need this define when building with a static lib on Windows
+STATICCPPFLAGS = -DCURL_STATICLIB
+endif
+
+CPPFLAGS = -DCURL_NO_OLDIES $(STATICCPPFLAGS)
 
 # Dependencies
 LDADD = $(LIBDIR)/libcurl.la