"ImportError: DLL Load Failed" when trying to open a notebook in a virtual environment

I’ve created a virtual environment using venv, activated it, successfully installed a few modules. I can start jupyter-notebook, but when I open a notebook I receive the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “C:\Program
Files\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.7_3.7.2544.0_x64__qbz5n2kfra8p0\lib\runpy.py”, line 193, in _run_module_as_main “main”, mod_spec)
File “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.7_3.7.2544.0_x64__qbz5n2kfra8p0\lib\runpy.py”, line 85, in _run_code exec(code, run_globals)
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\ipykernel_launcher.py”, line 16, in app.launch_new_instance()
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\traitlets\config\application.py”, line 845, in launch_instance app.initialize(argv) File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\traitlets\config\application.py”, line 88, in inner return method(app, *args, **kwargs)
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\kernelapp.py”, line 635, in initialize self.write_connection_file()
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\ipykernel\kernelapp.py”, line 243, in write_connection_file iopub_port=self.iopub_port, control_port=self.control_port) File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\jupyter_client\connect.py”, line 164, in write_connection_file with secure_write(fname) as f: File “C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.7_3.7.2544.0_x64__qbz5n2kfra8p0\lib\contextlib.py”, line 112, in enter return next(self.gen)
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\jupyter_core\paths.py”, line 461, in secure_write win32_restrict_file_to_user(fname)
File “c:\users\felze\twitterpd\env\lib\site-packages\jupyter_core\paths.py”, line 387, in win32_restrict_file_to_user import win32api ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

In the notebook the kernel won’t connect. I’ve tried uninstalling, reinstalling pywin32 with conda and pip, and adding a number of locations to the path.
If I do not have the venv activated, I can open notebooks without the error. Kind of lost as to what I should try next.

did you ever find an answer?