Windows SDK 7.1 command prompt LNK1104 - winapi

Question

I just installed Windows SDK 7.1 on Windows XP Professional with SP3. Now I'm checking to see if the installation is OK and, already, I'm having a problem. I still cannot get cl.exe compile a simple hello world C++ code from the Windows SDK 7.1 Command Prompt. Here is a snapshot of command prompt output:
Setting SDK environment relative to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\.
Targeting Windows XP x86 Debug
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1>cd /d "D:\My Documents\Sources"
D:\My Documents\Sources>cl /EHsc /FeD:\Target\hello hello.cpp
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.30319.01 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
hello.cpp
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 10.00.30319.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'C:\Documents'
I tried moving hello.cpp to D:\ and ended up with the same result. CSC.exe, on the other hand, compiled a hello world C# code in the same command prompt without a hitch. What should I do now?
Note that I do not have any version of Visual Studio installed. I installed Windows SDK so that I can use Qt Framework 4.8.0 for VS2010 in Qt Creator and learn a little bit of C# in SharpDevelop.

Answer 1

Some people adviced me to wrap all environment variable values containing C:\Documents and Settings\ in double quotes, e.g.: Set ALLUSERSPROFILE="C:\Documents and Settings\All Users", Set USERPROFILE="C:\Documents and Settings\Ant Luc", and so forth. There was no sane way to perform the modification, except for %TEMP% and %TMP%, since they were not available for editing through System Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables. So I edited C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SetEnv.cmd and added the following lines right below #ECHO OFF:
SET ALLUSERSPROFILE="C:\Documents and Settings\All Users"
SET USERPROFILE="C:\Documents and Settings\Ant Luc"
SET HOMEPATH="C:\Documents and Settings\Ant Luc"
SET APPDATA="%USERPROFILE%\Application Data"
SET TEMP="%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp"
SET TMP="%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp"
But I then got Error C1083 when compiling the hello world code with cl.exe. In desperation, I edited C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\SetEnv.cmd again, and changed the value for %TMP% to D:\VSTEMP, created a directory called VSTEMP in D:\, tried to compile the source code again, and sighed in relief because it finally compiled successfully.
I decided to grab and install Visual Studio 2010 Express out of curiosity, opened Visual Studio Command Prompt, tried to compile the same hello world code, and was faced with the same set of problems which I fixed with the same workaround. Conclusion: the compiler (or linker) cannot properly handle whitespace in %TMP% -- assign a directory without a single whitespace to it.
I still do not know what is wrong with my setup, but all this hassle seems stupid anyway. FWIW, this is the first toolchain that made me jump through hoops just to get a hello world code compile successfully.