Brendon, it is not very typical, "writing about a cms you can't even download". Usually getting Moodle running on a local machine is quite straight forward.
We can help, but you need to be a little more precise in your post.
It's helpful to say exactly what you were doing, and exactly what the error message was. ("php.exe error or something" is too vague).
Pablo's offer is a good one. What are you really wanting to do? Do you really need to be installing Moodle? If you are in Christchurch or Wellington. feel free to give me a call.
Just double checking brendon: assuming you want this on a local machine, have you seen the link here: http://download.moodle.org/windows/ and the docs here: http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Complete_install_packages_for_Windows These are non-technical, and you don't need a degree in CS to follow them.
-Derek