@Mental.. it works with xampp but not with wamp!
@Jethro, JVCode and others...
Well I had similar problems with my local server. (using wamp server bundle... where you can switch apache, mysql and php versions on the fly) (
http://www.wampserver.com/en/)
just like you it more or less crashed at step 2b and on page reload told me that db was already there and I had to remove tables to install.
I then just downloaded a different localhost server bundle xampp (
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html)
you can install it without deinstalling the WAMP server (just make sure you dont run both at the same time.
I installed xenforo on Xampp and.. (it did give me a small errorr (i didnt touch it.. and it continued.. by itself) and suddenly it was installed. And it works fine.
Now when i'm working with xenforo, i launch xampp, for vbulletin and other stuff i run wamp..
only drawback with xampp is that you cant test an application with several versions of php just with 1 click.. but i can live with that. (and package also contains perl, mailserver and ftpserver which wamp doesnt)
Luc