diff --git a/.appveyor.yml b/.appveyor.yml
index 552d5d0c4..00a927247 100644
--- a/.appveyor.yml
+++ b/.appveyor.yml
@@ -52,12 +52,10 @@ install:
 build_script:
   # Build the compiled extension
   #- "%CMD_IN_ENV% python setup.py build_ext --inplace"
-  - "md corpora\\en"
-  - "cd corpora\\"
-  - "wget --no-check-certificate http://wordnetcode.princeton.edu/3.0/WordNet-3.0.tar.gz"
-  - "tar -xzf WordNet-3.0.tar.gz"
-  - "mv WordNet-3.0 wordnet"
-  - "cd ..\\..\\"
+  - ps: appveyor\download.ps1 
+  - "tar -xzf corpora\en\wordnet.tar.gz"
+  - "ls \"C:/projects/spacy/include/"
+  - "ls \"C:/projects/spacy/include/"
 
 
 test_script:
diff --git a/appveyor/download.ps1 b/appveyor/download.ps1
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d5af114cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/appveyor/download.ps1
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+# Wordnet download Windows script
+
+$WORDNET_URL = "http://wordnetcode.princeton.edu/3.0/WordNet-3.0.tar.gz"
+$WORDNET_RELATIVE_PATH = "corpora\en"
+
+function Download ($filename, $url) {
+    $webclient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
+
+    $basedir = $pwd.Path + "\"
+    $filepath = $basedir + $filename
+    if (Test-Path $filename) {
+        Write-Host "Reusing" $filepath
+        return $filepath
+    }
+                                                                               NET
+    # Download and retry up to 3 times in case of network transient errors.
+    Write-Host "Downloading" $filename "from" $url
+    $retry_attempts = 2
+    for ($i = 0; $i -lt $retry_attempts; $i++) {
+        try {
+            $webclient.DownloadFile($url, $filepath)
+            break
+        }
+        Catch [Exception]{
+            Start-Sleep 1
+        }
+    }
+    if (Test-Path $filepath) {
+        Write-Host "File saved at" $filepath
+    } else {
+        # Retry once to get the error message if any at the last try
+        $webclient.DownloadFile($url, $filepath)
+    }
+    return $filepath
+}
+
+function InstallWordNet () {
+   if((Test-Path $WORDNET_RELATIVE_PATH) -eq 0)
+   {
+       mkdir $WORDNET_RELATIVE_PATH;
+   }
+   $wordnet_fname = $WORDNET_RELATIVE_PATH + "\wordnet.tar.gz" 
+   Download  $wordnet_fname $WORDNET_URL
+}
+
+
+function main () {
+    InstallWordNet
+}
+
+main
\ No newline at end of file