I had a lot of troubling finding the .minecraft folder itself on the computer (windows 8), but now I can't figure out how to launch the game. I've clicked on pretty much all the folders and icons provided (especially ones with .jar at the end) but so far, no luck.
Could you help me out?
You can't run Minecraft using the .jar file as it needs extra starting variables... Which you need the Minecraft launcher to set them up for you. (Login info, version,version-specific libraries, mod-related libraries extra config etc.)
You can download the launcher from http://www.minecraft.net/download
