PostgreSQL 9.1 on Windows XP Pro 32 bit Installation Failure/problems
After using the Windows Installer for this system the server would not start and could not be started manually from the services management console. Whilst trying to troubleshoot this problem I discovered that reinstalling and changing the default data folder location seemed to resolve the issue. I guess this must be a permissions problem when the data folder is left within the program folder on Windows XP, i had no such problem on an alternative Vista system.
I used the alternative data location of ‘c:\postgresql\data’.