Problem using xsltproc on Windows

I am using xsltproc on Windows from 
https://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html. The version of libxslt I am 
using is 1.1.26. When I run xsltproc against an XML file that has the line:

<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" 
href="E%3a/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml"/>

I get the error message:

warning: failed to load external entity 
"file:///C:/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/vmd/doc/gcc-mingw-5.1/debug/E%3A/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml"

In other words xsltproc does not appear to recognize 
"E%3a/Programming/VersionControl/modular-boost/libs/vmd/doc/vmd_reference.xml" 
as a valid absolute path where "E%3a" is "E:".

Is this correct behavior for xslt ? If not does some more recent version 
of xslt on Windows correct this problem ?