http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=67034.0 (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=67034.0)
I'm not a coder, but something odd happened when I tried to install RC2 on a new copy of XAMPP. It seemed like it just wouldn't talk to the sql server, I had to install 1.0.5 and upgrade up. My adventures from the Support forum are above.