allright well ive come to grips with the fact that my computer wont run any linux systems, which is another quest for another time but for right now im trying to run a program called cygwin on windows so i can use some linux programs, problem is i cant figure out how to use it to compile/open a program, as of right now its in C:\program files\dragonheart\circle-3.1\circle3.1.tar.gz i know this doesnt work in linux, but i dunno what to do. Can someone help me?

This would be better in a non-linux board...

Have you tried doing the regular commands for extracting and compiling, or are you asking what they are?

yea im asking what they are, im utterly lost with it, and thats somethin im not used to feeling when it comes to computers
i also have no idea why but everytime i click on unix for install it locks up while parsing setup.bz2 but when i do it under dos it works fine, and most posts ive seen so far say many problems arise when they do it with dos, any ideas on how to fix this?

I don't if I'm understanding what you're asking, but to compile the software cd to the directory it's in and type:

tar -zxvf circle3.1.tar.gz
cd to the new directory it makes and run:

./configure
make
make install

It should install to somewhere like /bin. You can type whereis or which and the name to try and find out where it went, or you can read the readme or install file and it'll tell you. Then just give the full path of the command and it should run...

Is this what you wanted to know, or did I misunderstand?

yea thats for the most part what i wanted to know, but i also need to know how to cd to the directory. I cant figure out how to since its under windows, i tried cd /c/programfiles/dragonheart/circle-3.1 but it says its not there

Oh, just remembered, Cygwin won't let you access anything outside of it's virtual filesystem (or whatever it's called) unless maybe you mount it, but there's an easier way. In Windows Explorer just copy the file to somewhere inside the Cygwin directory, like /home/username.

ok well i cd to a local file which was /usr/bin but i tried the tar command and it says thats not a command

Did you install the tar package when you installed Cygwin?

aha just reread your post, i have no idea about the tar package, i just did the default setup

Time Out! Reset everything!
Before we even try to help you do this, we need to make sure your cygwin is installed properly, and that you understand what it is. I love using cygwin on my XP machine, but you must first install the X-windows package for cygwin before you can treat this like an actual linux installation.

1) Where is cywin installed on your computer?
2) Have you installed the X-win package with the cygwin installer?

After you answer these, I can help you try to get ready to install programs. Although, personally I don't really compile anything on cygwin, I just use it as a means to access computers running Linux, but most of this stuff is doable. Keep in mind, that cygwin is a bit limited, and you will not be able to compile just any program available on Linux.

allright well i had a problem and had to deeat it and try and reinstall and began haveing problems i had with installing it the first time, it locks up like 99% of the time right after selecting what i want from setup, but anyways i made sure to click install on xfree and it was all going to C:\cygwin

Okay, now open a cygwin window and type:
startxwin.bat
Does that open an xterm window? You should also see an X in your taskbar in windows. That means you have an xserver open.

cant say yet still tyring to get it to reinstall again

Well, just reply to this post when you have it installed, and everything works as I've stated above. If cygwin ain't runnin', then you ain't installing diddly on your system.

Devbmx, is this a program you need to run under X Window? If not, installing and running X isn't needed for this task.