Loading the sketchbook examples problem

Weird. It sounds like avr-gcc and uisp are never actually running. Am I right in assuming that you replaced your name with in the path? Or does the message actually include the string ? Are there any non-ASCII characters in your username?

Does C:\Program Files\arduino-0008\tools/avr/bin/avr-gcc exist? Can you from a command prompt in the C:\Program Files\arduino-0008\ directory run tools/avr/bin/avr-gcc (it should say something like avr-gcc: no input files). From the same directory, can you run the first command line you posted (the one with pins_arduino.c)? Does it generate the pins_arduino.c.o file?

Some idea for debugging: do you have any versions of cygwin installed? If so, make sure they're not running. Also try moving arduino to a directory without any spaces in its name.