I've jus saw that mongrel's last updat was about one year ago...
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/wiki/WikiStart?action=diff&version=35
has it been disontinued?
is there any other lightweight alternative for a windows development box?
Since mongrel hasnt been updated in such a long time there are certain features like --prefix which no longer work with the most reason version of rails (2.3+)
I would recommend using thin server instead as it seems to be the natural evolution of mongrel and the project maintainers are actively developing it.