Not able to make VC6 work in a new VBP 8.3 env

[djo2112]

I'm not having any success building a C++ project in VBP 8.3.
This is a clean install on a 2008 vm. (The previous build script was VBP6 on 2003)

The MakeVC6 command is:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Bin\msdev.exe" "C:\Build\Source Code\VC Projects\Proj\Proj.dsp" /MAKE "Proj - Win32 Release" /REBUILD

This works from the command line and there it spawns the additional process box.
From VBP I get an rc.exe application error dialog: "The application was unable to start correctly" and the output tab contains:

Deleting intermediate files and output files for project 'Proj - Win32 Release'.
Compiling resources...
Error spawning rc.exe
Tool execution canceled by user. (because I clicked OK in the error dialog)

My assumption was that since this is a new environment, paths (and libs?) must be incorrect.
I did the normal debugging to make sure the command line and VBP variables were the same but they are slightly different.
They are different because of the "Program Files" / "Program Files (x86)" from the previous server to the new server.
The DEVSTUDIO_NET_DIR is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio.
I honestly don't know what's correct. I am not a C++ developer but I noticed that rc, cl and midl are integral to compiling/building.
When I did a "where rc.exe", in both VBP and the command line they reported:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Bin\RC.EXE
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\RC.Exe

I tried removing rc.* from MSDev98 and still receive the same error so I might be barking up the wrong tree.
I'm posting in the hope that a savvy C++ builder could point me in the right direction.
Thanks for your time.