Installation seems to stall

Hi, all.

I am administering a WordPress site that was set up for an organisation before I took it over.

Now, I’m implementing WordPress at another site and the “5 minute” installation is not as much of a breeze as I thought.

== Issues and Background ==

(1) The web site hosting service seems to bury the ‘actual’ site several layers down.

The error message from running wp-install.php illustrates this:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected $end in D:\clients\mysite.com\mysite.com\mysite.com\wordpress\wp-settings.php on line 188

(2) I have tried:
a. leaving the MYSQL database address in the wp-config.php file as ‘localhost’;
b. putting the ‘actual’ address in rather than leaving as ‘localhost’ (as ‘http://1.2.3.4’ where the numbers are examples!); and,
c. I’ve also tried putting the port number in (as ‘http://1.2.3.4:1234’ where the numbers are examples!);
And, no attempt seems to make any difference.

(3) I have done all this several times over from several computers running various browsers and operating systems.

== Request ==

Clues would be helpful, and faithfully tried.