Before I start explaining the problem - yes I looked in the Qt forums and website before coming here.
I downloaded and installed the Qt libraries and the IDE. After
Your error simply means that vcvarsall.bat is not in a folder that is listed in your PATH environment variable. You can fix that in two ways.
cd into the folder where vcvarsall.bat is located and call vcvarsall.bat from there.In my case (and by default), vcvarsall.bat is located in the following directory:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat
EDIT: For Visual Studio 2017, the location has changed. It is now at:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat