Oracle installer on Windows can fail to run, crashing out without a useful error message.
I found fix was to change the temp directories in a command window
set temp=d:\junk set tmp=d:\junk
and then run the installer (setup.exe) from that same command window.
TEMP was set to use c:\documents and settings before, and the installer unpacks a lot of temporary files in there as it runs. Limitation in space quota each user can have in documents and settings I believe caused the installer to bomb out.
This happens with the 10g installer (including patchset 9208) which has more temporary files to unpack than earlier versions.