I tried to install crowd, followed the instructions and changed set crowd.home=c:/projects/atlassian-crowd-1.4 . On a database setup screen I choosed embeded DB and when I pressed next I got an error creating DB. It turned out to be spaces at the end of the path.

crowd.home=c:/projects/atlassian-crowd-1.4<some spaces that none can see><end of line> - doesn't work

crowd.home=c:/projects/atlassian-crowd-1.4<end of line> - works