Was looking at the WIN32-MSVC demo. Appears the timer is not being started.

Had to add a call to xStartTimer(). xTimerStart(xTimer, 0);

Also checked version 9.0.0rc1. xTimerStart() is missing there too.

Which timer?

The one in mainblinky(), mainblinky.c

I've just looked at the demo files and see the timer is being started.

What I did:

1) Search for xTimerCreate(), so I can find the name of the variable in which the timer's handle is stored, which is xTimer. Above the call to xTimerCreate() I see the comment:

/* Create the software timer, but don't start it yet. */

2) Search for where the xTimer variable is used, where I find the following code:

/* Reset the timer if a key has been pressed.  The timer will write
mainVALUE_SENT_FROM_TIMER to the queue when it expires. */
if( _kbhit() != 0 )
{
    /* Remove the key from the input buffer. */
    ( void ) _getch();

    /* Reset the software timer. */
    xTimerReset( xTimer, portMAX_DELAY );
}

3) Read the comments at the top of the file that describe what the demo does.