Thanks for your reply. Yes, I understand that the compiler and debugger are two separate processes. I'm sorry about the way i typed the original post, I see now that it was unclear and that I'm actually trying to resolve both a debugger issue and a compiler issue. apparently I melted the problems together in my mind when I posed my question.
I was considering the compiler problem as described above first. I installed the codeblocks-12.11mingw-setup.exe installer, and would like to use the mingw compiler. I set the compiler search directory to c:\program files (x86)\codeblocks\mingw - code blocks is still unable to find the compiler. this error is unique to my win7 x64 install. I used the same code blocks installer on my xp machine as well, and there are no error messages at startup of code blocks. Which directory should I tell code blocks to search for the compiler?
Second (now that we've separated my thoughts, thanks for that
, when I attempt to debug my code, debugging fails with the error message "Starting the debugee failed, no executable specified, use 'target exec'." This also only happens on my win7 x64 install. I'm using gdb for the default compiler.
I sincerely appreciate any suggestions for resolving these problems. For now I'm writing my code on my XP computer because the code blocks install worked "out of the box" so to speak, with no additional configuration necessary. I'd love to know how to smooth out these issues on my main PC.