Installing PEAR on Windows

i wanted to install PEAR on my Windows machine as a prelude to installing symfony. i'd installed PEAR before on Windows, no biee. but when i tried using the batch file to install PEAR today, i was greeted with a list of 12 options after deciding to install a system-wide copy. the last option specified C:\\. as the PHP executable path. every time i changed it to C:\\php.exe, i couldn't continue to install PEAR. i had to leave it as-is, install PEAR, then edit the pear.ini file to specify a correct path. ideas, anyone?