diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 17ec69020ac..22c4fe34614 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -600,6 +600,9 @@ Release 2.1.0-beta - 2013-07-02
     MAPREDUCE-5177. Use common utils FileUtil#setReadable/Writable/Executable & 
     FileUtil#canRead/Write/Execute. (Ivan Mitic via suresh)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5355. MiniMRYarnCluster with localFs does not work on Windows.
+    (Chuan Liu via cnauroth)
+
     MAPREDUCE-5291. Change MR App to use updated property names in
     container-log4j.properties. (Zhijie Shen via sseth)
 
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/MiniMRYarnCluster.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/MiniMRYarnCluster.java
index 93a91243736..6eb5789d89e 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/MiniMRYarnCluster.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-jobclient/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/MiniMRYarnCluster.java
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.CommonConfigurationKeys;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileContext;
+import org.apache.hadoop.fs.LocalFileSystem;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapred.LocalContainerLauncher;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapred.ShuffleHandler;
@@ -87,6 +88,21 @@ public class MiniMRYarnCluster extends MiniYARNCluster {
     try {
       Path stagingPath = FileContext.getFileContext(conf).makeQualified(
           new Path(conf.get(MRJobConfig.MR_AM_STAGING_DIR)));
+      /*
+       * Re-configure the staging path on Windows if the file system is localFs.
+       * We need to use a absolute path that contains the drive letter. The unit
+       * test could run on a different drive than the AM. We can run into the
+       * issue that job files are localized to the drive where the test runs on,
+       * while the AM starts on a different drive and fails to find the job
+       * metafiles. Using absolute path can avoid this ambiguity.
+       */
+      if (Path.WINDOWS) {
+        if (LocalFileSystem.class.isInstance(stagingPath.getFileSystem(conf))) {
+          conf.set(MRJobConfig.MR_AM_STAGING_DIR,
+              new File(conf.get(MRJobConfig.MR_AM_STAGING_DIR))
+                  .getAbsolutePath());
+        }
+      }
       FileContext fc=FileContext.getFileContext(stagingPath.toUri(), conf);
       if (fc.util().exists(stagingPath)) {
         LOG.info(stagingPath + " exists! deleting...");