The alternative would be MPLABX but you know, I just payed $50 for the PBP3.1 upgrade but in order to properly use MPLABX one, apparently, has to use a several year old version - in which the chips I payed $50 to get compiler support for aren't available at the assembler level (ie they can't be used). And even when using an older version it apparently can't debug anything but BYTE variables properly without running thru hoops.

As I wrote earlier, the compiler is solid and I love it but the surrounding/supporting stuff quite frankly sucks compared to what's offered elsewhere. It's 2017, we're past the 16F84 and a glorified Notepad. Give me a solid IDE with syntax highlighting, code folding and hardware level debug that works please.

There are several threads with several users reporting the exact same issue and it's been going on for years. I've seen on it several computers as well. I haven't been coding much on my newest machine with W10, it'll be interestning to see if does it there as well.