I tried to install the apprentice version on my Windows 10 (Dutch - Home version- 64) pc (Intel i7 4790 / Nvidia GTX 970). The install fails every time. There is no desktop icon created and Houdini won't show in the apps list, (however it does show in the recently installed list) and in the c/users/me/ directory no Houdini folder is created so when I start the program it keeps looking for a file in one of the subdirectories of the houdini folder which obviously has not been created either.
The licencing doesn't seem to be a problem.
Am I doing something wrong?

Does your Windows username contain non-ASCII characters? Houdini on Windows currently has some issues handling file paths containing non-ASCII characters, unfortunately. If that's the issue you're hitting, you could try making a new user account with just ASCII characters in it. Houdini on Linux supports unicode paths better, so that could be an option too.