It would help if you told us what exactly you were doing.
The steps I've followed to compile games are:
1) Download and install the Inform compiler
2) Download and unpack the library files (if not included with the compiler)
3) Download (or create with an editor) a source file game.inf
4) "inform game"
But why do you need to compile the games? Most of the Inform games are
available as compiled .z3 and .z5 files already, so if you only want
to play other people's games you don't have to bother with compiling
them... (A horrible suspicion strikes me: you haven't been trying to
compile the compiled games, have you?)
Magnus