Installing MinGW again is not going so well.

[OnionKnight]

Story: My hard drive was sinking. Partition tables going wild and CRC errors emitting everywhere so I thought that I might be a good idea to format it. So I threw everything over to my secondary disk and then formatted. However, everything didn't get onboard. A lot of stuff had already been affected by the plague, like the files in the MinGW folder.
So now when I finally have it all fixed I was intalling the files all over again and hoped for it to work again. Well it didn't.
(Start reading here if you don't like stories)
I am missing some folders inside the "lib" directory, like "gcc" which it's complaining about not having;
C:/Program Files/MinGW/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/3.4.2/../../../../include/stdio.h:26:20: stddef.h: No such file or directory

I don't know why I don't have it this time, and neither do I remember how I installed everything the first time. I installed these packages, downloaded from the MinGW site:
gcc-g++-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz
mingw-runtime-3.9.tar.gz
mingw-utils-0.3.tar.gz
w32api-3.6.tar.gz
binutils-2.15.91-20040904-1.tar.gz
gdb-5.2.1-1.exe
mingw32-make-3.80.0-3.tar.gz

EDIT: Oh wait, it's stddef.h and stddarg.h that's being a problem. Well, that's even stranger.

[Dave_Sinkula]

I am missing some folders inside the "lib" directory, like "gcc" which it's complaining about not having;
C:/Program Files/MinGW/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/3.4.2/../../../../include/stdio.h:26:20: stddef.h: No such file or directory

When installing something else recently, I discovered that MinGW has a "dual" header system. I think the solution may have been with providing both paths. *scratches head*

Search for the files -- if they do exist, then check into the paths. *scratches head again*

[Dammit! What was that cure?]

[OnionKnight]

I seem to have found a solution. gcc-core-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz
Why doesn't the "Installing MinGW" section cover that one? "gcc-tarballs" is a bit vague.
But now I'm out of the frying pan and into the fire. gcc crashed on me the first time I ran it after that it seems like it's been caught in an infinite loop, consuming lots of CPU.
EDIT: After letting it run for a while some cc1.exe crashed.

[Ken Fitlike]

There's no need for a manual install of mingw's components(unless you particularly want to) - just download and use the candidate installer(it works); it will fetch and install most of what you've listed there(gcc v3.4.5 mingw-special). I think you'll still need to add gdb, though, and there's a newer w32api-3.7.tar.gz and mingw32-make-3.81-1.tar.gz which you may be interested in anyway.

If you use the MinGW 5.0.3 installer to install to a separate directory, you'll have a working version very quickly and can always fiddle around with your manually installed version if you want or need that one, too.

[OnionKnight]

The installer didn't want to work, so I tried a reboot. Well, now the computer can't even read from the disk. It either gets to the screen asking if I want boot in Safe Mode or not, or it gets to loading KDCOM.dll or it loads everything but then fails when it's checking the disks (/SOS and /NOGUIBOOT switches)

I think these are clear signs that I really need to get some new hardware. Though I don't know which, probably a new hard drive is this one is quite old, with a storage capacity of 40 gb. Mind you that it was a lot at that time so it really is old. I think also the mother board is causing some trouble because sometimes it won't find my DVD-burner.

[maxorator]

These problems seem to have something to do with Windows. I think you should do a format

[Frobozz]

If you've been reading, you'll notice he already has formatted. Personally if I had that system, I wouldn't try replacing components. I'd replace the entire thing. Even a system built from today's low-cost components would be better than all the effort of having to fiddle to get an older system working.

[OnionKnight]

I'd replace it all if I could. But as it is I'd have to get a job and ditch school or I could rob a bank. I am very poor. I'd probably be able to get a new hard drive and mother board as they're pretty cheap. I'm having a hard time finding Socket A mother boards though. They seem... discontinued. Wikipedia says so as well. I guess I'd have to get a new processor as well?