So I installed Netbeans and it picked up on the existing win AVR installation with the GCC compiler. but trying to compile an empty project I get:
C:\WinAVR-20100110\utils\bin\make.exe -f Makefile CONF=Debug
"C:/WinAVR-20100110/utils/bin/make" -f nbproject/Makefile-Debug.mk QMAKE= SUBPROJECTS= .build-conf
make: *** [.build-impl] Error -1073741502
BUILD FAILED (exit value 2, total time: 8s)
Something to do with the "make file"