I see a Makefile there that is documented as having been run with NetWare and CodeWarrior 8 years ago. This would incline me even more strongly to take a combination of version and tools known to work routinely (e.g. from cygwin distribution), verify its working, and, if still motivated to try with current microsoft libraries (and eventually, Intel compiler), try to make the least possible changes at any one time. Can't you create a log showing what it was doing at the point where it failed?