Sometimes installations fail. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the environment does not fulfill one of Drupal's requirements. Sometimes there is a permissions problem either on the file system or the databases. And sometimes bugs in code turn up. This can be a frustrating experience. Where do you turn for help?
Following are the best resources for trouble shooting a Drupal installation, in order:
The README.txt and INSTALL.txt documents: These come packaged with Drupal, and provide a surprising amount of information that will help troubleshoot installation issues. There are even database-specific installation documents
(INSTALL.mysql.txt, INSTALL.pgsql.txt
, and so on) with information tailored to your selected database environment.The online Drupal installation manual: http://drupal.org/documentation/install. This covers the installation process in depth, with many extra notes for exceptional circumstances.
Community support: Available...