My ruby4mirc DLL (located at http://kthx.net/ruby4mirc) compiles in VS.NET 2005. Source code is available there that you can use as a reference.

Keep in mind that the Express version of VS is missing many SDK's and toolkits needed to properly compile a lot of applications, though it should be able to compile a minimal DLL just fine

You may want to elaborate on your problem though-- are you having trouble compiling, or running the DLL in mIRC? You have to make sure your symbols are propertly exported, if you were able to compile.

Generally, a minimal dll source file hello.c looks like:

Code:
#include <windows.h>

int __declspec(dllexport) __stdcall helloWorld(HWND mWnd, HWND aWnd, char *data, char *parms, BOOL show, BOOL nopause)
{
  strcpy(data, "Hello world");
  return 3;
}


With a hello.def file (for the exports)

Code:
LIBRARY hello
EXPORTS
helloWorld


And would be used in mirc as:

Code:
//echo -a $dll(hello.dll,helloWorld,$null)



- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"