WSAStartup error (10093) when calling exiftool through PyExifTool

I have installed PyExifTool (https://smarnach.github.io/pyexiftool/). The installation was successful. However, when I try to run the example code provided there:

import exiftool

files = ["test.jpg"]
with exiftool.ExifTool() as et:
    metadata = et.get_metadata_batch(files)
for d in metadata:
    print("{:20.20} {:20.20}".format(d["SourceFile"],
                                     d["EXIF:DateTimeOriginal"]))

I am getting this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "extract_metadata_03.py", line 5, in <module>
    metadata = et.get_metadata_batch(files)
  File "c:\Python38\lib\site-packages\exiftool.py", line 264, in get_metadata_batch
    return self.execute_json(*filenames)
  File "c:\Python38\lib\site-packages\exiftool.py", line 256, in execute_json
    return json.loads(self.execute(b"-j", *params).decode("utf-8"))
  File "c:\Python38\lib\site-packages\exiftool.py", line 227, in execute
    inputready,outputready,exceptready = select.select([fd],[],[])
OSError: [WinError 10093] Either the application has not called WSAStartup, or WSAStartup failed

I have tried with exiftool.exe Version 11.91 stand-alone Windows executable (from https://exiftool.org/) in my path as well as installing exiftool using Oliver Betz's ExifTool Windows installer (https://oliverbetz.de/pages/Artikel/ExifTool-for-Windows)

I have tried two separate Python installations (Python 3.8 and also Python 2.7) with the same behaviour.

Any assistance with this or suggestions for troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.

You get the error because the select.select() used in exiftool.py is not compatible with Windows. To solve this you can manually add the following to exiftool.py:

if sys.platform == 'win32':
    # windows does not support select() for anything except sockets
    # https://docs.python.org/3.7/library/select.html
    output += os.read(fd, block_size)
else:
    # this does NOT work on windows... and it may not work on other systems... in that case, put more things to use the original code above
    inputready,outputready,exceptready = select.select([fd],[],[])
    for i in inputready:
        if i == fd:
            output += os.read(fd, block_size)

Source: https://github.com/sylikc/pyexiftool/commit/03a8595a2eafc61ac21deaa1cf5e109c6469b17c