Java APIs

Ok heres the story, i went to the bookstore and picked up "Java Programming for the absolute beginner, by Joseph P. Russell". Now i've been following the instructions the book gives on how to install the program, and am stuck at this point.

It tells to to go to 'start' 'run' then type in "sysedit" so i do, and of course it wont work, says it cannot find it. So i read ahead and see that i'm supposed find the window entitled AUTOEXEC.BAT and click it. So i decided since i couldnt get that to work, that i would just search the computer for the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, i found it, and 'right click' 'edit'. Then it gave the example of this.....
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
and i am suppose to add this at the end of that strip....
;C:JDK1.3.1\BIN
so i did that, and thought it was all ok, but then later on, it tells me to update it i need to either restart my computer, or run the AUTOEXEC file through DOS from my C: drive, because thats where they say the file is. So i do that, but when i ran the file, the edit that i added did work, it was still the original....
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND

I have tried to restart my computer too, and that didnt help, it still didnt change it or make the compiler work (i went ahead to see if it worked anyways with the sample code they gave)

Then after all that, i noticed that when i searched the the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, the one in my C: drive never showed up, it was another one, so i went directly into my C: drive through MY COMPUTER, and then i went down and found the file, i couldnt 'right click' 'edit', so instead i opened it with notepad, and that let me edit it, i added the necessary text at the end of the SET PATH spot and saved it, but again that still did not work.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Its really irrating that i'm gonna end up having more trouble with installing the compiler, than i am with learned the java language itself.