I have compiled bitcoin 0.4 under Visual Studio 2010. I know this isn't supported, but the bug isn't connected to Visual Studio.

In util.h there is this block of code:

inline uint160 Hash160(const std::vector<unsigned char>& vch)
{
    uint256 hash1;
    SHA256(&vch[0], vch.size(), (unsigned char*)&hash1);
    uint160 hash2;
    RIPEMD160((unsigned char*)&hash1, sizeof(hash1), (unsigned char*)&hash2);
    return hash2;
}

Now the problem is that if there isn't a wallet the function is called with an empty vch. In "debug" mode the &vch[0] asserts, because 0 is >= the size of the vector. Read for example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2728255/c-getting-the-address-of-the-start-of-an-stdvector