Fatal Error Help

[Jessn00b]

First off, you should know that I'm brand new at all of this, so any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm trying to install WordPress on my local server using XAMPP, and I've followed the instructions I found at Six Revisions (http://sixrevisions.com/tutorials/web-development-tutorials/using-xampp-for-local-wordpress-theme-development/). When I try to run the WordPress Install script (step 29 in that tutorial), I get the following error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function __() in C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-admin\includes\file.php on line 11

I've tried searching the forums here and the internet in general, but I've yet to find anything that looks like what I'm dealing with. The closest I have come is a reference to short_open_tags, but even a search with that keyword didn't bring up any results that help (or maybe it's because I'm so new that I don't understand--it's quite possible). I have a verybasic understanding of short open tags, but I don't know how to set them to on or off or if that's even what my problem is here.

Can anybody help? Thanks in advance!

ETA: It looks like I'm using XAMPP control panel version 2.5. I just downloaded XAMPP yesterday, but I understand there is a newer version of the control panel that is better. Could that make a difference?

[Altrea]

In most cases when this error occurs in wordpress it is because of corrupt files.

- Download wordpress again
- extract the zip archive with a different zip program
- try again to install