WinEdt should detect your TeX installation "automagically".
When you first open WinEdt you should be greeted by a screen called "WinEdt Configuration Wizard and Quick Tutorial". If this window does not appear, or if you want to reference the tutorial in the future, you can access it under Help/ConfigurationWizard. Before you examine this documentation in detail, try and compile a sample tex file -- like Curtis' papershell -- and see if everything works. If WinEdt creates a dvi file without complaint and you are able to view it properly, then everything is working and you don't need to configure WinEdt further. If you encounter problems, check the Troubleshooting section below.
Figures: If you want to display figures in your TeX file, you must download and install the postscript viewer Ghostscript. WinEdt should be able to detect Ghostscript automatically.Troubleshooting: If WinEdt doesn't work properly, the most likely cause is that WinEdit can't find you TeX isntallation. There are several different ways to fix this problem. The easiest -- and least likely to muck up your systerm -- is to do the following:
Open the file "C:\Program Files\WinEdt\Bin\TeX\LaTeX.bat" in a text editor such as Notepad. (If you did not install WinEdt in the Program Files folder, substitute the name of the folder into which you installed WinEdt.)
Look for a line that begins "LATEX.EXE" and replace the text "LATEX.EXE" with the text "C:\TEXMF\MIKTEX\BIN\LATEX.EXE". Do not change anything else in the file.
If things still don't work right, open the WinEdt Configuration Wizard and Quick Tutorial" and click on the TeX tab. You will find detail instuctions on various files to modify in order to get TeX to work. Unfortunately, none of the steps documented are very easy for someone with little computer experience. If you can't get WinEdt to work and are daunted by the WinEdit documentation, I suggest that you try WinShell instead. It is much easier to configure.