Need advice: How to integrate Git & Github with IDEA on Windows

I've had so many problems using Git on Windows, it's really rather tragic.  I thought Github for Windows would be the most mainstream way to get Git installed on Windows. But I cannot get it to reliably work with IDEA.

It seems that it cannot find git.cmd/git.exe.. even though Git's shell works fine. I think this may be because it injects the Git paths when the shell gets launched, NOT by putting them into the system paths. I tried to fool this by adding the "portableGit" paths manually to my system path. But after an auto-update of git, these paths all changed and I am left again without IDEA being able to find git.exe.

Is using the git.exe provided with git for windows a hopeless cause? What distribution of Git works the best for people?

I BELIEVE I am using https authentication to connect to github. SSH keys are more of a pain so although I used them early on with Git, I am not currently. Should I give in and just make SSH keys for all my git uses?

Any help is appreciated.

Message was edited by: Eric Mulvihill  (removed off topic rambling)