I guess there's a first time for everything so I findally ran into the MSI failed error on Windows 8.
Not sure whether the installation log hs been uploaded but I'm attaching it (zipped of course!). If anybody (problem from VMware I guess can make heads or tails of it I'd app[reciate it.
Naturally I executed the exe as an adiminstrator and I am an adiministrator myself. To search Google for solutions to this problem would lead to hundreds of hits I'm sure.