In fact some versions of Windows CE intentionally set this value to (0xffffffff - 10 minutes) before bootup so that bugs were more likely to come out in testing, rather than showing up 42 days after bootup.
You can store milliseconds in 32-bit quantities all you want, if you remember the One True Axiom of Time: never compare tick counts, always subtract and compare to the difference you were looking for. If you do it that way, you can't screw it up, at least in C.
Technically, overflow of signed integers invokes undefined behavior (or possibly implementation defined. In my copy of a draft standard overflow is given as an example of undefined behavior, but 6.3.1.3 say implementation defined). In practice, it's the same bit values as unsigned integers, which does the right thing in this case.
GetTickCount is the poster child for this class of bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GetTickCount
In fact some versions of Windows CE intentionally set this value to (0xffffffff - 10 minutes) before bootup so that bugs were more likely to come out in testing, rather than showing up 42 days after bootup.
Also, don't store time intervals as floating point, especially if you're working on a missile system: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1667060