diff --git a/.github/workflows/windows-builds.yml b/.github/workflows/windows-builds.yml
index 34534ced..1b4b5b0b 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/windows-builds.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/windows-builds.yml
@@ -41,4 +41,4 @@ jobs:
 
       - name: Test
         # Disable parallel test runs on GitHub runners due to resource constraints
-        run: ctest --preset=${{ matrix.preset }} --parallel 1
+        run: ctest --preset=${{ matrix.preset }} --parallel 1
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/systemc-components/common/include/loader.h b/systemc-components/common/include/loader.h
index a16c6b7e..e3adc5e1 100644
--- a/systemc-components/common/include/loader.h
+++ b/systemc-components/common/include/loader.h
@@ -645,7 +645,14 @@ class loader : public sc_core::sc_module
         {
             if (elf_version(EV_CURRENT) == EV_NONE) SCP_FATAL("elf_reader") << "failed to read libelf version";
 
+#ifdef _WIN32
+            // On Windows, open() defaults to text mode which can corrupt binary files (e.g. .so, .skel.so) during ELF loading.
+            // O_BINARY forces raw binary reads to prevent this.
+            m_fd = open(filename(), O_RDONLY | O_BINARY, 0);
+#else
             m_fd = open(filename(), O_RDONLY, 0);
+#endif
+
             if (m_fd < 0) SCP_FATAL("elf_reader") << "cannot open elf file " << filename();
 
             Elf* elf = elf_begin(m_fd, ELF_C_READ, nullptr);
diff --git a/tests/components/loader/loader-test.cc b/tests/components/loader/loader-test.cc
index 36f651c3..d268b0b9 100644
--- a/tests/components/loader/loader-test.cc
+++ b/tests/components/loader/loader-test.cc
@@ -25,6 +25,14 @@ TEST_BENCH(LoaderTest, SimpleReadELFFile)
 
     ASSERT_EQ(m_initiator.do_read(0x0000, data), tlm::TLM_OK_RESPONSE);
     ASSERT_EQ(data, 0xaf);
+
+    /* CRLF bytes at offset 0x0004-0x0005: without O_BINARY on Windows, 0x0D 0x0A
+     * is collapsed to 0x0A by the CRT text-mode translation, corrupting the data. */
+    ASSERT_EQ(m_initiator.do_read(0x0004, data), tlm::TLM_OK_RESPONSE);
+    ASSERT_EQ(data, 0x0d);
+
+    ASSERT_EQ(m_initiator.do_read(0x0005, data), tlm::TLM_OK_RESPONSE);
+    ASSERT_EQ(data, 0x0a);
 }
 
 TEST_BENCH(LoaderTest, SimpleReadData)
diff --git a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.asm b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.asm
index 690834fa..563a64fb 100644
--- a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.asm
+++ b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.asm
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 .section .data
 .word 0xdeadbeaf
+.byte 0x0D, 0x0A    /* CRLF: collapsed to 0x0A in Windows text mode without O_BINARY */
diff --git a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.bin b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.bin
index b296cb08..47ebc34e 100755
--- a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.bin
+++ b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.bin
@@ -1 +1 @@
-¯¾­Þ
\ No newline at end of file
+¯¾­Þ
diff --git a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.elf b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.elf
index 60b5298f..daaba7aa 100755
Binary files a/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.elf and b/tests/components/loader/src/loader-test.elf differ