Ruby on Rails for Windows: how to get started without getting a different error every time?

I'm on Windows 8.1 and have been trying to get Rails to work on my computer for quite some time now. I followed the guides to install Ruby and Rails and everything correctly, but whenever I try to execute any kind of Rails command through PowerShell, I get an error with one of the gems. I can't run the server command, can't generate, can't run console. Here is the most recent error:

C:/RailsInstaller/Ruby2.1.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/execjs-2.5.2/lib/execjs/runtimes.rb:48:in 'autodetect': Could not find a Javascript runtime.  See http://ift.tt/1OP55Se for a list of available runtimes.  (ExecJS::RuntimeUnavailable)}

Other times I get errors with native gems follow guides to resolve those, but nothing ends up working.

How do I get Rails to do anything on my Windows machine? Should I just get a Linux vm?