To configure Wget on Windows, run configure.bat and follow the instructions in the windows/ directory. But notice what the readme in the windows directory says: For VC++ the current default is to configure wget with ssl support; first get openssl (http://www.openssl.org), compile it and install relevant headers and libraries where your compiler can find them; currently this could mean (presuming default installation directories) copy (from the compiled openssl dirctory) the whole inc32/openssl directory and its contents to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include\openssl", and from out32dll (in the openssl directory) the two needed libraries (libeay32.lib and ssleay32.lib) to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\lib". These locations aren't exactly the best but will get you started if you don't know where to place these headers and libraries. Usually at runtime some openssl libraries (currently ssleay32.dll and libeay32.dll) will need to be available in your environment PATH. If you don't know what this means you could just drop them in the same directory you'll install wget (although that could not work, it depends how you'll install wget). If you really don't know what I'm talking about you could just place them in your c:\winnt or c:\windows (or whatever) directory, however this really is not the correct place. If you don't want/can't to compile wget with openssl comment the SSL related lines in windows\Makefile.src (use notepad or whatever); then follow the normal instructions (configure.bat, nmake). If you have problems compiling openssl: go to http://www.openssl.org, download openssl-0.9.6b.tar.gz (or whatever the current version is), unpack (it's a .tar.gz but winzip does handle that gracefully), follow the instructions: install.w32 explains how to configure, compile and test (don't bother with the assembly stuff if you need it for wget only, just follow the instructions for "without assembly"). Installation of the libraries for windows systems is not exactly covered in the readme; one option is to take the whole inc32\openssl directory and copy it where VC can find it, a (not clean but working) option is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include\openssl in other words the complete path to bio.h must be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Include\openssl\bio.h and so on. Also take libeay32.lib and ssleay32.lib (not .dll!), copy them to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Lib (obviously adapt if you installed Visual C somewhere else). Remember wget will need to use libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll (the dlls this time, not the .lib!) at runtime, so keep them either in the same directory as the running wget executable or put them somewhere in your path. All this stuff (with the current versions) does compile clean out of the box if you follow the instructions correctly, no need to tweak anything.