Login Loop

I’ve tried using different browsers, closing them, clearing cache, uninstall/reinstall WP… all end up with the same result.
I get a Step 3 and that page’s body is blank. According to the documentation, the only screen left in the install process is a page that give you a random-generated password for admin.
I then used phpMyAdmin to change the password in the wp_users table. I then went to /wordpress/ to confirm it was even loaded. When I click “login”, it doesn’t do anything. I then clicked “register” and created a normal user. On the last page of the registration process, I’m presented w/ a button to login… again nothing happpens. I confirmed that my new normal user was added to the wp_users table.
There must be something wrong with /wordpress/wp-login.php
Good thing I’m commited to getting WordPress running, or this would be enough to drive me to MoveableType or Blogger. I’m familar w/ PHP, but not the WP system so I have no idea where the problem could be.
Please tell me this is a common problem.

Sorry, never used IRC before… Never found a need and nobody explained the benefits.
I started to look at the wp-login.php code and may have found my issue… There is a for loop to set variable names listed in the $wpvarstorest. I outputed the value of each variable and all are blank. The next code section performs a switch($action), which is not set so nothing happens.