Steve, this is what I did to install Ruby 1.8.1 mswin32 manually.

Get Ruby-mswin32 binaries

    ruby-1.8.1-i386-mswin32.zip (3,764KB) current release

from
   http://www.dm4lab.to/~usa/ruby/index_en.html

Extract it into a directory, e.g c:\ruby

Then set your path to point to the bin directory. I did it in
Control Panel -> System->Advanced->Environment Variables, under System
Variables, find PATH and add the following at the end of the line:
           c:\ruby\bin

Then open 'cmd' windows, and run :
           ruby -v            <--- check ruby version

You should be getting something like the following:
          ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i386-mswin32]

Happy Ruby'ing.

"Steve Cooper" <stevec890 / yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a07f3c32.0402051106.7e5d1e3 / posting.google.com...
> Hi
>
> Sorry for being dense, but I can't seem to get ri to work either with
> the one-click Ruby installer for Windows (after fixing the path in
> ri.bat) or with the MSwin32 binaries.  I have found other threads
> about this, and I've tried to run rdoc, but it looks like I need the
> Ruby source to do that. That's where things fall apart for me: which
> additional files do I need to download, where do I run rdoc, which
> command-line options to use, etc.
>
> Would somebody mind pointing me to (or walking me through) the steps I
> need to follow to get ri working properly?
>
> Thanks very much. (And thanks to those who have helped with my
> previous questions.)
>
> Steve