Here is some further info, Since the handle is the same, and since I do have a mix of ANSI and unicode (although forcing either mode with either text BlankStream, and STDATA got same results as before) I figured to just bypass text. I added a line to the resource file
#define BlankStream 300
#define STDATA 666
and changed the line in code to
invoke FindResource,[hInstance], 300, 666
I also fixed the LoadResource to use the [hInstance]
Result is that it no longer fails at the FindResource, and code flows as it should. Hmmmm, maybe I should have tried L instead of 8 (UTF-16 not UTF-8) at this point I just want to go to bed.
Thanks for your help everyone!