Help on installing OCaml on Windows XP

[Sam Block <sjb4g@virginia.edu>]

Hi all!  I'm new to the list, and am having a fair amount of trouble  
getting OCaml up and running on Windows XP (I have it running on Linux  
just fine).

Here's my goal: I want to run ocamlopt and have a binary executable  
for my project on Windows and be able to give it to my friend and have  
it run; this would rule out Cygwin, since I'd need extra .dll files.   
I don't want that, so I wanted to go ahead and download one of the  
other OCaml binary installables (MSVC or MinGW).  However, I tried  
both, and I keep getting the same error:

>> ocamlopt -o geomancian figures.ml geomancian.ml
>
> 'as' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable
> program or batch file.
> File "figures.ml", line 1, characters 0-1:
> Error: Assembler error, input left in file <directory
> omitted>\camlasme1fe97.s

I'm at a loss of what to do next.  I've googled for pages and pages of  
results that, while this problem isn't uncommon, I haven't found any  
solution to it.  I feel bad asking this, but could someone guide me  
through the installation on Windows step-by-step?  I'd really  
appreciate it.

Thanks!
-Sam Block