Install to localhost

I've been trying out most, if not all, of the suggestions.  I may be getting closer to the problem, and would welcome some further thoughts.

It looks like it is nothing to do with CI (or at least I'm not that far yet) and a connection problem or something related along those lines?

Code:

<?php
$link = mysql_connect('localhost:122','nairb','nairb');
if (!$link) {
    die('Could not connect to MySQL: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo 'Connection OK'; mysql_close($link);
?>

Well, I hope you're enjoying the challenge and not under any big deadline!
Do you have a PHP-based SQL admin tool like Adminer or PHPMyAdmin? Can you do http://localhost:122/phpmyadmin and it works?
If it doesn't, I'd say it has something to do with either IIS or that you're using a port number, though why shouldn't you be able to do that? As for IIS, are you able not to run it or do you have something else that requires IIS?

Hey, don't work without a PHP debugger. Several free IDEs have this features built in. Two are NetBeans and CodeLobster. Without a debugger, it's like you're driving with a blindfold on -- you are going to crash!