Instaling Drupal on Windows
I personaly try two diferent ways one is using bundled installers and the other is using XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org) -
Instalation with XAMPP is quite simple
1. Download XAMPP and extract in local directory (I prefer not to install it as a service and start it when I use it)
2. Dowload latest version of Drupal and extract it in directory <xampp>/htdocs/<drupal dir>
3. Create the database for use with Drupal
4. Install Drupal
As you can see this have way too many steps so in recent week or soo I am traying the bundled installer
First I try Microsoft WebMatrix and boy it sucks a lot . This product have potential but is so unready so my sugestion is don't use it for now.
The thing that I found work is Aquia Drupal dev Desktop (http://www.acquia.com/downloads#acquia-drupal)
to get it runing on Windows
1. Download Dev Desktop
2. Install
and you've got running Drupal installation ready for exploring