Ok, point taken, so lets aim at v2.6. Should i open a new issue then?

Attached you'll find a new diff against v2.6. This time pyd_d.vsprops
gets patched too and the linker doesn't even generate a .manifest file.
So no, the *.pyd files do not get any manifest info, neither a loose
*.pyd.manifest nor an embedded one.

I checked a per-user v2.6 install with the CRT manifest pointing at
"..". I also tried this approach for our software, but i couldn't get it
working on w2k3.

The solution i am proposing doesn't need a CRT manifest file in
"./DLLs". This approach works on w2k3, but i can not test this on vista SP1.