Thank you very much for the replies, I certainly was in DLL Hell. As suggested, I switched my compiler to msys2 but I was still getting a very similar DLL error when trying to compile my code from cmd:

The procedure entry point crc32_combine could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\msys64\ucrt54\bin\..\lib\gcc\x86_64-w64-mingw32\14.2.0\cc1plus.exe

I ended up spending a while going back and forth with chat gpt to troubleshoot the error and was eventually recommended to try a where zlib1.dll command in cmd. This pointed me to a folder called GtkSharp which after deleting, resolved any issues I had compiling or running my code from cmd. Unfortunately I am not positive where this folder came from in the first place, my best guess would be that it was something left over from a previous compiler installation.

At this point Vs code was now giving me an error:

(preLaunchTask 'C/C++: g++.exe build active file' terminated with exit code -1)

but Deleting the .vscode folder of my project let the code compile.

I can’t say for certain that what I did would resolve my original error as I’m quite happy leaving well enough alone at this point. I am also uncertain where chat gpt got zlib1.dll from.