Reminds me of the trouble a large number of users had trying to install CS3 on Vista. The installer wouldn't initialise properly, and of course it didn't print any meaningful errors. Eventually I found a fix for this on someone's blog which suggested changing one of the environment variables.

After searching the Adobe forums and finding many users with the same problem, it seemed pretty obvious that Adobe just didn't know what the solution was.

Edit: found the relevant paragraph in the below mentioned Adobe blog:

"In CS3, there were some serious problems that customers faced and the time it took to resolve those issues in customer support made the initial experience with CS3 painful for some customers."

Painful? Oh yes...