installation nightmare

This so-called easy installation is hell. The output I got from executing the install command in my browser is code gibberish, not what it should look like. It begins like this:

wp-config.php file. I need this before we can get started. Need more help? We got it. You can create a wp-config.php file through a web interface, but this doesn’t work for all server setups. The safest way is to manually create the file.”); require_once(‘../wp-config.php’); require_once(‘./upgrade-functions.php’); $schema = ( isset($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) && strtolower($_SERVER[‘HTTPS’]) == ‘on’ ) ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’; $guessurl = str_replace(‘/wp-admin/install.php?step=2’, ”, $schema . $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . dirname($_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]) ); if (isset($_GET[‘step’])) $step = $_GET[‘step’]; else $step = 0; header( ‘Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8’ ); ?>

hide_errors(); $installed = $wpdb->get_results(“SELECT * FROM $wpdb->users”); if ($installed) die(‘
‘.__(‘Already Installed’).’
‘.__(‘You appear to have already installed WordPress. To reinstall please clear your old database tables first.’).’

‘); $wpdb->show_errors(); switch($step) { case 0: ?>
ReadMe documentation at your leisure.’), ‘../readme.html’); ?>

I have a wp-config.php file. The WordPress software was uploaded into its own directory called “wordpress” underneath the root directory. The wp-config.php file is in this directory.