As far as windows is concerned, I don't know of anything to help you. I would suggest; however, if you are just starting with Microchip to consider using Atmel AVR stuff. It seems to me that their tools and products work better without weird 'undocumented' mess ups like I used to have everyday with Microchip. I never used one I liked except for the 12c508. Atmel has good programming suites and many people have some great C compilers and RAD tools. A basic compiler that is just like Qbasic is available from