I am not using the kitchen to build my roms. I am also using a sprint ohone. I have had no issues with vc.
Another thing you could try is to take the VC16 cab and edit the package. Remove all the files except setup.dll and reset the install path to \windows. If you do this you can add the bits to your build in the kitchen or whatever and then, after booting, run the cab. This should only add the reg data and run the setup.dll thus setting the phone to whatever state or services state needed at install. I used this method until I could find the issue in my initial installs until I tracked down all of the keys.
-saridnour