If you spent 2 weeks on something like getting an LCD working, perhaps you might want to consider a different compiler, or something... I'll agree that getting an LCD working for the first time can be frustrating, because of the many steps you have to go through before it shows its first sign of life, so if you mess up anything you see nothing at all... But at the very worst, you should be able to do it the hard way and watch it step-by-step in simulation to make sure all the signals and timings are correct. I am assuming that if you already spent that much time on it then you must have at least tried this kind of simulation... It's annoying, but if you play by the book and follow all the initialization steps you should be guaranteed to get it working; if your compiler/IDE is somehow preventing you from doing this then that's an issue...