1. I couldn't get mingw to install properly. And just so nobody asks, I'll tell the reason right now. I have two drives, C: has only about 4 gigabytes left on it. So I put it on D:, now the D: drive formats every few days...
Wha? "Formats every few days"? What do you mean by that?
2. I thought I might be able to build wx through C::B, but I couldn't figure it out.
Nope, it's so easy that you don't even need Code::Blocks. Just open up a command prompt and enter the following two lines (assuming that you extracted wxWidgets to C:\wxMSW-2.8.3):
cd C:\wxMSW-2.8.3\build\msw
mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc BUILD=release SHARED=1 MONOLITHIC=1 UNICODE=1
10 minutes or so later, depending on how fast your PC is, wxWidgets will be built. If you're using Visual C++ instead of MinGW, then you just use the special Visual Studio command shell and replace "mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc" with "nmake -f makefile.vc".
So then I started looking around for others, but as far as I can tell, the only other ones out there draw their own graphics instead of the operating systems, which is a bit annoying I think.
I agree; at least, pretty much the only other usable ones are that way. Some of them are in fact more usable than wxWidgets, but I prefer wxWidgets precisely because it uses native widgets (doesn't draw its own graphics).
1. Can anybody recommend any decent resource materials for Win 32?
Only the MSDN Library (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx). I started with a couple of the Win32 sample and skeleton apps floating around in there and worked up from there. I don't really recommend learning Win32 as your API of choice; it's very outdated.
2. Can somebody tell me if it's possible to build wx through C::B, and if it is, perhaps I could get a little support there?
See above. :)
3. Can somebody recommend anything to make designing a GUI a fairly simple process that uses the OS's native graphics?
Well, I certainly do recommend wxWidgets. Once you get a basic wx app going, you can figure out how to load XRC files and then use a tool like wxSmith (which comes with Code::Blocks) or wxFormBuilder (http://wxformbuilder.org/) to design dialogs, menus, and such visually. (I'd love to be able to recommend wxSmith as my first choice, but wxFormBuilder at this point is quite a bit easier to use.) Just make sure to learn about sizers, because you can't make GUIs in wxSmith OR wxFormBuilder without them.
Cheers,
JohnE / TDM