title: Installing GDAL 2.1 64-bit for Python 2.7, Windows 7
body: <p>Ah, yes, back to the joy of installing GDAL.</p>
  
  <p>This time, I need to install GDAL 2.1 for Python 2.7, 64-bit, on Windows 7. I used these installers for the <a href="http://download.gisinternals.com/sdk/downloads/release-1500-x64-gdal-2-1-0-mapserver-7-0-1/GDAL-2.1.0.win-amd64-py2.7.msi" rel="nofollow">Python bindings</a> and <a href="http://download.gisinternals.com/sdk/downloads/release-1500-x64-gdal-2-1-0-mapserver-7-0-1/gdal-201-1500-x64-core.msi" rel="nofollow">GDAL core</a>, and set the appropriate path variables. I am using <a href="http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#numpy" rel="nofollow">Numpy 1.10.4</a>.</p>
  
  <p>In the Command Prompt:</p>
  
  <pre><code>gdalinfo --version
  &gt; GDAL 2.1.0, released 2016/04/25
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In Python:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; Python 2.7.11 ... MSC v.1500 64 bit(AMD64) on win32
  from osgeo import gdal
  gdal.__version__
  &gt;&gt;&gt; '2.1.0'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So far, so good. But, it fails to find <code>_gdal_array.pyd</code> when trying to read a dataset to a Numpy array:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ds = gdal.Open("test.tif")
  data = ds.ReadAsArray()
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "&lt;pyshell#2&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
      ds.ReadAsArray()
    File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\osgeo\gdal.py", line 1825, in ReadAsArray
      import gdalnumeric
    File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\osgeo\gdalnumeric.py", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
      from osgeo.gdal_array import *
    File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\osgeo\gdal_array.py", line 26, in &lt;module&gt;
      _gdal_array = swig_import_helper()
    File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\osgeo\gdal_array.py", line 18, in swig_import_helper
      import _gdal_array
  ImportError: No module named _gdal_array
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Has anyone been able to install GDAL 2.1 successfully on a 64-bit system?</p>