the Blood Dev C Compiler, while possibly committing the faux pas of making an obscure reference to the Linux garbage can, is an exceptional compiler once the price has been taken into account. Should it fail to respond properly, and you are sure the code you've written is correct, I would blame a faulty installation. Uninstall and download from another source.

If you can't download because of proxies, I would contact your network administrator immediately, and explain your concerns about his crippling of your internet service. I find it highly unlikely that this is the case, as I can see no reason for doing so.

Microsoft Visual C#, despite being a bastardization of an otherwise perfect and complete language, is a useful tool for expiditing the process of creating GUI applications. But you don't have to take my word for it. You could download V, as you previously suggested, but no, neither of these programs (to my knowledge) will grant you permission to use pointers as direct references to locations in memory. To do so would allow inept, careless, or even distracted programmers to unwittingly create memory leaks by placing objects on the stack without ever resolving them, thus defeating the managed code environment presented by Microsoft Intermediate Language, in turn creating buggy code, whose corrections could cause days or weeks spent in the labs.

However, the OS shouldn't be a problem. And that Borland Compiler? It's not free anymore; all you can get are command line tools.

Hope this lets you see things in a new light. Have fun, and don't give up. To code is devine.