Installing Postgres on Windows

I tried installing Postgres 8.3.4 on my Windows XP and found little things that stalled me for a while. Am not a big time techie, so here's simple steps that I followed to get this done successfully.

Ensure you have a drive on your PC that has NTFS. (The primary folder for Postgresql that contains the configuration files also... Data ... is required to be stored on NTFS drive that Postgres has chosen for security reasons.)

1. After running the installer, Select a language. Next.

2. Next.

3. Next for Installation Notes

4. Now for Installation Options, ensure that you select the postgres to be installed ono the local disk and browse to the NTFS drive to store the Postgres installation directory. Next

5. Now i spent some reasonable amount of time for this step. For Service configuration, leave the Account name as postgres, let the Account domain as the default value specified. Normally the Computer name. Enter your domain password and click next. You would get a prompt for creating a new account as it does not exist. Click ok. And choose not to reset the password. (They have pretty complicated passwords :) I was setting up locally for personal use so was fine with a weak password.).

Note here that in case you have tried this installation earlier and uninstalled it for some reason: The account name u specified here (postgres) remains to stay in the system which will create problems for you to install next time with same name. Now this user account does not show on the Windows GUI where you expect to just remove it. But you can delete it using

NET USER < username > /DELETE

username = postgres in above case.
Next.

6. Initialize Database Cluster:
Before you can do anything, you must initialize a database storage area on disk. This is called Database Cluster.
To initialize this, leave the default options, select on listening to other addressed than localhost(the addresses can be specifically mentioned in the pg_hba.conf file),
Enter the super user and the password that you want to set. Next.

7. Select procedural language. Next.

8. Enable Contrib Modules. Next

9. Select Next. till installation begins.

10. The last option after installation of Stack Buuilder is for additional components/drivers for the version of PostgreSQL.

And your Postgres is ready to be used.
:)

Two links attached to help you out for any other issues.
http://pginstaller.projects.postgresql.org/
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Running_&_Installing_PostgreSQL_On_Native_Windows

Have fun.