Maybe it is just lazy.  Try giving it
a carrot, or hitting it with a stick.

Another way to put that might be..
The people who are willing to help you
figure your IDE (I am not one of them)
would be able to do so a lot more easily
if you provide clear, specific information
about what error messages you are getting,
and/or a clear description of what you
actually see when it "doesn't work".

Andrew T.

should they not go in the plugins directory?

Cool nickname...

At one point, I was content to install the base Eclipse package and then
download and install plugins as required.  But then I discovered
www.yoxos.com and decided to give it a try.  If you use their system,
you can basically tell what you want to do and it will build a tar/zip
file of all the correct plugins you need, so you don't have to worry
about putting them in the correct places.  Give it a try.

Don't download and unzip in dir's anymore.

Install the standard Eclipse and use the built in update utility to
get and install what you need.

Arne

if you  have downloaded them in form of three zipped files,then you
should unzip them you will find two folder in each of them(plug-ins
and  features) don't care about the rest.now get all the contents in
features folder from EMF for example then paste them in the features
folder of original eclipse do the same for plug-ins and do the same
for GEF and VE ,I tied this and it worked.
if you don't want to do all this just download smart eclipse ,I didn't
try it but it contains VE.