I cannot get 4.5.3 working on my 2003 server. I keep getting to the db part and it's stuck with this error:
Installing Database - Version 4.4.0...undefined...Success
Installation of Database Complete

the permission part works,
the user is the dbo in the db, 
db connectivity test works,
network service has full permissions,
other asp.net 2.0 apps work fine on this server.

The install instructions seem to imply I'm running this from vs2005 which I'm not, I've just installed the install zip contents to the web server and set up the app in iis.

Is there a manual way of installing this app with instructions that work as the wizard is just way to flaky for me?

I was editing web.config in notepad which must have been causing me issues. I switched to editing in vs2005 which gave me syntax highlighting and saved it from there..worked fine.

so yes, it was me that was flaky, not the insaller.