Trying to install SharePoint 2010 on Window 7 and ran into this error.
First, I was using this script to install SharePoint 2010 on my Win7 box.

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/a88cad83-f595-4487-940e-f678ce47eb5f

(make sure you take a look at the Discussions tab.  Ran into a few issues but quickly found solutions on there.

After this, I then hit the failed to create the configuration database error when trying to run the wizard.

Onto another site….

This site outlined all the prerequisiutes needed for a SharePoint 2010 install.

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/10/25/sharepoint-2010-pre-requisites-download-links.aspx

Not 100% sure what I missed, but I download / installed each of these again.

FIXED!!!