I was able to get in, finally, by switching from FF to IE but the page looks corrupt and I can't really do anything.  At least my balance is the same.

I'm viewing the source in IE and my information is all there but it's not displaying--I wonder if coinbase ever tested this on Windows 8 in IE???

I've created a github project from a fork of bitcoin.  The original post has been updated with the details.

I've updated the first post to emphasize that this project should only be used for educational purposes unless you really understand the code--and I don't, so I've switched over to testnet-in-a-box.

I have found a couple of issues, one of which caused me considerable grief.  The Bitcoin 0.8.5 source code relies on the ASSERT macro being active, even in release mode.  In wallet.cpp there is a line:

assert(reservekey.GetReservedKey(vchPubKey));

When you create new projects in MSVC, the release mode configuration, by default, has NDEBUG defined and, if NDEBUG is defined, ASSERT statements are NOPed.  This means that line of code from wallet.cpp gets skipped in a release mode compile and it contains a critical statement.  If that statement is NOPed, "change" from a BTC send transaction will be sent to a bogus address based on an empty string (1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E).   It was all working so well in debug mode so I switched over and whamo.  Well, it was quite a wake up call.

Live and learn.  When it first happened, I thought I had been hacked so I'm grateful that it was just a bug in the way I created the MSVC project.

I just wanted a place to store the solution while I play with it and also let others access it, if they are interested.  I'm also used to TFS but not "git".  Anyway, if I make any changes that people actually care about, then I can add them to github.

I based the port on this source, not the latest from github:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.5/bitcoin-0.8.5-win32.zip/download

I just did a diff on main.h from the latest on github to the source that I started with and it's already way different. 

I'm having issues with InvalidChainFound and I'm stepping through it now to debug.

I forked a new project (again) from Bitcoin and committed the fixes for a port to Visual Studio 2013 on the 0.8.6 branch here:

https://github.com/ClaireDuSoleil/bitcoin/tree/0.8.6

This project builds the daemon, Qt app, and all the dependencies in 32 and 64 bit.  I re-worked the batch scripts that build the dependencies so please check out the readme:

https://github.com/ClaireDuSoleil/bitcoin/blob/0.8.6/MSVC/README.md

The projects at codeplex are still VS2012 and I don't currently have plans to continue updating these repositories:

Litecoin(0.8.6.2) :  https://coindusoleil.codeplex.com/

Bitcoin(0.8.6) : https://bitcoinqtmsvc2012.codeplex.com/

Please let me know if you notice any issues.  Thank you.