Gordon.
When you say that the windows_installer failed what were the symptoms, were there any failure messages?
In the HOPS installation notes, Appendix A, there is a description under section 2.0, following figure A.2.2, that describes an optional step to edit the “windows_installer_cmd” file and monitor the installation of the HOPS software in a CMD window.
If you have not tried this then edit the “windows_installer_cmd” file as described and run the installer, any errors encountered during the installation should appear in that window as plain text which may give you a hint to the underlying problem. If necessary you can copy and paste any error messages from that monitor window into a text document for later fault diagnosis.
Other things to watch for are third party anti-virus programs or Windows protection that may be blocking the installer. For the latest builds of Windows 10 you may be limited to only writing the HOPS software to your user documents folder or the desktop, other locations are routinely blocked by Windows protection software.
After HOPS is installed normally it never appears as a program in the Windows applications menu, HOPS is run directly from its desktop shortcut.
William.