If you do discover that this is indeed the problem, you would have two choices:
a) rebuild the libraries with wchar_t set to be the same as a 16 bit integer. b) alter your app to use wchar_t as an intrinsic type.
Personally I would recomment the latter. VC 8.0 uses wchar_t as an intrinsic type so you're going to be on the losing side of the tide of history if you don't make the change. Your program will be more correct and more portable as well. And you'll have less problems like this in the future..
I am using VC7.1, and I ended up having to go with solution A. I agree with you that solution B is a much better solution, but I'm afraid I will have to deal with that another day -- when management is more malliable 8-) Thanks for the help and the excellent library, Jared