The first one of these I did some time ago had problems with non-US versions of Windows with the common control library. This one should be OK. The number of RGB/a bitmaps increase the file size by a large amount but if you use a reputable EXE compressor you get a smaller result that using later compressed images in your code. The example is built as UNICODE but it will also build as ANSI just by changing the __UNICODE__ flag at the start of the source file.
The main purpose of this test piece is to show that RGB/a channel 32 bit images display transparent sections correctly if you are using a manifest and run it on XP or later.