In 3.8+, the DLL search path for dependent DLLs when importing extension modules excludes PATH and the current working directory. So it's far less likely for an import to fail with ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT.

Currently the error message in Python 3 includes the base name of the extension module, e.g. "DLL load failed while importing _spam". No error codes are special cased to use custom error messages, so it still includes the localized error text from the system, which may contain parameterized inserts (%). 

The common errors when importing an extension module are missing and mismatched dependent DLLs: ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND (126) and ERROR_PROC_NOT_FOUND (127). The system messages for these two errors do not contain inserts. For example, if the UI language is Japanese, a missing DLL dependency raises the following exception:

    ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _spam: 指定されたモジュールが見つかりません。