Installing Access 2007 runtime fails

Have got a Access 2007 database which I have packaged and sent to a user who has administrator rights on a machine running Windows 2003.  There is no version of Access installed.

All of the installation routines appear to work fine: the files are copied, additional registry keys added, icons and shortcuts established, etc, etc, etc, EXCEPT the Access 2007 runtime.  That part of the installation routine responds with the extremely helpful dialog "Installation of Access Runtime failed".  

Write access to the relevant drives doesn't seem to be an issue.  Have retried several time with the same result.  Have also tried downloading the Access Runtime directly to the machine in question from the Microsoft site with also the same issue.

Question: will the access 2007 runtime actually install on a Windows 2003 machine?  or is there likely to be another issue somewhere.

Thanks in advance