Installing and upgrading help

1. In your Moodle directory, I think you will find a file called "config.php"
2. open "config.php" with a text editor
   
3. locate the following line:
   $CFG->wwwroot = 'http://example.com/moodle';
4. change the above line to:
   $CFG->wwwroot = 'http://localhost/moodle';
5. save the file
6. open your browser and type "http://localhost/moodle" in the address bar
   

As Gordon already pointed out, this string "http://example.com/moodle" is there as a place holder. Definitely you have to change that in your particular installation, unless 'fcourse you are the owner of the domain example.com

Your $CFG->wwwroot will look like
- 'http://localhost/'
- 'http://localhost/moodle'
- 'http://a.public.ip.address' eg. 123.45.67.89
- 'http://a.private.ip.address' eg. 192.168.2.3
- 'http://real.dns.name/moodle' whole internet
- 'http://bogus.domain/moodle' within your LAN
- etc.

I don't know what you plan to do. If it just a test to see how Moodle look like, a "quick" solution is perfectly OK. Talking about quick solutions, there are so many of them: Live-CD, bootable USB, XAMPP prepackaged, etc.

If you read through the discussion here, specially the forum "Servers and Performance", you'll see that Windows is not the way for production environments, specially for countries like Sri Lanka.

My advice is, leaning Unix/Linux is an investment whick will pay-off in the long run. Apart from the world-wide community, if you are attached to the university system of SL contact the people hier http://lms.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/ They are building up satellite leaning centers in the other universities.

Otherwise, if you not too far from Colombo, contact LKLUG, http://www.lug.lk through their mailinglist at first.

If you need further information, you can reach me through personal mail.