In order to be able to build the samples provided by RCF download, you have to explicitly disable precompiled header and set Character Set to "Not Set".
This being done, it builds and executes like a charm.
Build with Visual Studio 2012
Re: Build with Visual Studio 2012
I was unable to reproduce this (tried upgrading the vs2003 demo sln to vs2012 and it built without modifications). However, the upgrade was pretty noisy, so I've added a separate vs2012 demo sln to the distribution instead (build 2672).