Definitely a problem with VC8. Nothing I can do, besides changing Windows back to English completely, will let me compile the Core, let alone HelloWorld.
This appears to be a bug with VC8. When we tried with 7.1 it works fine. Please don't drop support for this yet. There was a mention on MS-KB that maybe something like AppLocale.exe could fix it, but I do not have the patience to deal with Windows.
What a pity... Could you at least provide a link to that MS-KB article?