problems after fresh install attempt

Hi folks. I have been monkeying around with wordpress for a couple months now and I love it. I was trying to set up a photoblog for my brother and I ran into a couple of issues. I will explain what lead up to it, but first, here is the error I get when trying to run install.php:

WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘home’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘siteurl’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘hack_file’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘active_plugins’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘blog_charset’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘permalink_structure’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘category_base’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘tag_base’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘template’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘stylesheet’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘use_smilies’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘cron’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘rewrite_rules’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘html_type’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘show_on_front’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_options’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘posts_per_page’ LIMIT 1 made by get_option
WordPress database error Table ‘dannyb.wp_posts’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.post_type = ‘post’ AND (wp_posts.post_status = ‘publish’)

Let me tell you what I did prior to getting that page. I uploaded a fresh install of wordpress 2.6.1 and went to run install.php. It told me that wordpress was already installed and that I should clear the database tables to reinstall. I went into the database administration web tool and selected all tables under my database and selected “drop.” When I ran install.php again in my browser, that is when I got the above output. I have tried several different versions of wordpress since a web search suggested that people solved similar problems doing that. I believe that wordpress is trying to make new tables in the database but cannot for some reason. Did I make a mistake by dropping the tables? Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!