diff --git a/.appveyor.yml b/.appveyor.yml
index 8fa399232..09fba1b92 100644
--- a/.appveyor.yml
+++ b/.appveyor.yml
@@ -30,7 +30,6 @@ test_script:
   - build\nimbus.exe --help
   - mingw32-make -j2 ARCH_OVERRIDE=%PLATFORM% V=0 NIMFLAGS="-d:release" test
   - IF "%PLATFORM%" == "x64" mingw32-make -j2 test-reproducibility
-  - mingw32-make -C vendor/nim-beacon-chain -j2 V=0 test
 
 deploy: off
 
diff --git a/env.sh b/env.sh
index 688c30304..d3888ad19 100755
--- a/env.sh
+++ b/env.sh
@@ -5,13 +5,16 @@ PWD_CMD="pwd"
 uname | grep -qi mingw && PWD_CMD="pwd -W"
 
 rel_path="$(dirname $0)"
-abs_path="$(cd $rel_path; ${PWD_CMD})"
+abs_path="$(cd $rel_path; pwd)"
+# do we still need this?
+abs_path_native="$(cd $rel_path; ${PWD_CMD})"
 
 # used by libp2p/go-libp2p-daemon
 export GOPATH="${abs_path}/vendor/go"
 export GO111MODULE=on
 
-# make it an absolute path, so we can call this script from other dirs
+#- make it an absolute path, so we can call this script from other dirs
+#- we can't use native Windows paths in here, because colons can't be escaped in PATH
 export PATH="${abs_path}/vendor/Nim/bin:${GOPATH}/bin:${PATH}"
 
 # Nimble needs this to be an absolute path