PostgreSQL 9 install on Windows: “Unable to write inside TEMP environment path.”

Question

I am attempting to install PostgreSQL 9 (postgresql-9.0.3-1-windows.exe) on my WinXP machine and get the following error at the start:

Answer 1

Well, in my case nothing worked, and disabling McAffee needed a special ticket with my company's security team to actually do... so I installed using the binaries, by following this guide Helpful Guide.

In summary, download the binary from here, unzip it, go inside the pgsql folder, create log and data directories in there, and then open a command prompt, navigate to where the pgsql\bin folder is, and run initdb -U postgres -A password -E utf8 -W -D POSTGRESQL_ROOT\data

You can start and stop the server by running

"POSTGRESQL_ROOT/bin/pg_ctl" -D "POSTGRESQL_ROOT/data" -l "POSTGRESQL_ROOT/log/pgsql.log" start

and

"POSTGRESQL_ROOT/bin/pg_ctl" -D "POSTGRESQL_ROOT/data" -l "POSTGRESQL_ROOT/log/pgsql.log" stop

where POSTGRESQL_ROOT is the full path to the pgsql folder.