Unfortunately, developing for rails in windows today is a bag of hurt, so you'll probably need to learn some basic linux skills. I'd suggest, if your time and hardware allows, to spend some time in a virtual machine using one of the more popular linux distributions to get a hold of what's going on. Besides, there is a LOT of guides and tutorials of how to set up the development environment for ubuntu or debian.

Anyways, keep going, pain is temporary :)

Off topic: there is a small and hard to notice "reply" link below every comment.