Finally, some progress

Nobody on the Drupal support forums had anything to say about why I couldn't run the Drupal PHP files so today I bit the bullet and decided to start from scratch. I went ahead and attempted a bundled install from xampp. Before I ran it, I uninstalled all of the recent programs, including MySQL, PHP, IIS, and any existing Drupal files.

I download the installable version for Windows from the xampp, and everything went smoothly. It installed Apache, IIS, MySQL, and a few other goodies that probably won't be useful in this scope. I logged onto the server through http://localhost, and it actually worked!

I learned that all of the web content is found in the c:\xampp\htdocs directory. This is the equivalent to the wwwroot folder on IIS. I then copied over the Drupal database files to the c:\xampp\htdocs\drupal folder, and pointed my web browser to http://localhost/drupal. I had my doubts, but it actually worked. I then re-created the MySQL database and the Drupal installation went forward without any error messages.

Now that the install is completed, I can actually start playing with the software. I am not happy about all of the hours wasted by trying to do a manual install, but that is what I get for not doing my research.

Here are the lessons I have learned that I would like to pass onto the next person:

Do not use ISS, use Apache for Drupal.
Do not try to install PHP with the automatic installer
DO use a bundled install package that installs Apache, PHP, and MySQL for you. It practically takes out the entire learning curve.