Thanks for the reply Thomas. Yes, per my prior post I'm using Windows XP Pro. I have verified the installer gave the postgres user full control on all the subdirectories, and also manually added it for the two parents, (8.4, and postgresql).
I've changed the debug level to 'debug5' to try to see what's going on - as per the prior post I'm getting alternating log entries...
incomplete startup packetcould not receive data from client: An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.
...repeatedly until the service times out. When that happens, there are several instances of postgreql.exe running, but the service is not recognized as running. Attempting to stop the service results in the message 'Service is not started', and I have to manually kill the processes and delete the leftover postmaster.pid file to start again. I'm really stuck on this one.
Thanks,
Terry S. in AZ