I finally came across an installation problem when installing Joomla 1.6 and was able to resolve it.  So if you are trying to access your Joomla installation folder and get an error message that says:

Warning: Unterminated comment starting line 598 in libraries/Joomla/language/language.php on line 598
Fatal error: fatal flex scanner internal error–end of buffer missed in  libraries/joomla/language/language.php on line 598

This simply means that there was a comment in the language.php file that was not closed properly.  You can find the comment line on 598.    The language.php file probably got corrupted during file transfer.

How to fix this?

1.  Unzip the Joomla installation zip file on your PC.

2.  Find the language.php file in the same directory structure – libraries/joomla/language/

3.  Upload ‘language.php’ from your PC to your server in the same directory, overwriting the old file.

That’s it.  You should be able to access your Joomla installation folder now.  If you get one or more of these error messages before you get into the installation screen, it’s probably best to upload the whole Joomla package to your server again.  I would advise to upload the zip file and then unzip it directly on your server.