register_globals is enabled issue

Your best option is to contact your hosts and ask them to switch register_globals off on the server itself - it's a security issue and extremely bad practice to leave it enabled.

Worst case scenario you could comment out the part of Drupal install that checks.

My host has register globals disabled but Drupal still gave me that error.

The way I solved this problem on my HostGator account was to copy the servers php.ini file (located at /usr/lib/php.ini) to my home directory (/home/MYUSERNAME/php.ini) and then edited it with the settings that I wanted. Then, I created an .htaccess file in the same directory with this in it:

<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
  suPHP_ConfigPath /home/MYUSERNAME
  <Files php.ini>
    order allow,deny
    deny from all
  </Files>
</IfModule>

FYI, my html files are stored in /home/MYUSERNAME/public_html. I got the solution from this thread: http://forums.hostgator.com/php-ini-without-copying-all-subdirectories-t...

I don't know if this will work for you, but I thought it was worth sharing.

This is the only thing that fixed it. Some software need it on so that is why rented shared server hosts won't set it to off. Scroll down and look at the code section.

#
# Apache/PHP/Drupal settings:
#

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.

Order allow,deny

# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
# For security reasons, Option followsymlinks cannot be overridden.
#Options +FollowSymLinks
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

# Make Drupal handle any 404 errors.
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Force simple error message for requests for non-existent favicon.ico.

# There is no end quote below, for compatibility with Apache 1.3.
ErrorDocument 404 "The requested file favicon.ico was not found.

# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

# Override PHP settings that cannot be changed at runtime. See
# sites/default/default.settings.php and drupal_initialize_variables() in
# includes/bootstrap.inc for settings that can be changed at runtime.

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  php_flag magic_quotes_gpc                 off
  php_flag magic_quotes_sybase              off
  php_flag register_globals                 off
  php_flag session.auto_start               off
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_flag mbstring.encoding_translation    off

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.

# Enable expirations.
ExpiresActive On

# Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A).
ExpiresDefault A1209600

# Do not allow PHP scripts to be cached unless they explicitly send cache
# headers themselves. Otherwise all scripts would have to overwrite the
# headers set by mod_expires if they want another caching behavior. This may
# fail if an error occurs early in the bootstrap process, and it may cause
# problems if a non-Drupal PHP file is installed in a subdirectory.
ExpiresActive Off

# Various rewrite rules.

RewriteEngine on

# Block access to "hidden" directories whose names begin with a period. This
# includes directories used by version control systems such as Subversion or
# Git to store control files. Files whose names begin with a period, as well
# as the control files used by CVS, are protected by the FilesMatch directive
# above.
#
# NOTE: This only works when mod_rewrite is loaded. Without mod_rewrite, it is
# not possible to block access to entire directories from .htaccess, because
# is not allowed here.
#
# If you do not have mod_rewrite installed, you should remove these
# directories from your webroot or otherwise protect them from being
# downloaded.
RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F]

# If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you
# can use one of the following settings to redirect users to your preferred
# URL, either WITH or WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix. Choose ONLY one option:
#
# To redirect all users to access the site WITH the 'www.' prefix,
# (http://example.com/... will be redirected to http://www.example.com/...)
# uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
# RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
#
# To redirect all users to access the site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix,
# (http://www.example.com/... will be redirected to http://example.com/...)
# uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

# Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory or in a
# VirtualDocumentRoot and the rewrite rules are not working properly.
# For example if your site is at http://example.com/drupal uncomment and
# modify the following line:
# RewriteBase /drupal
#
# If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/,
# uncomment the following line:
# RewriteBase /

# Pass all requests not referring directly to files in the filesystem to
# index.php. Clean URLs are handled in drupal_environment_initialize().
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

# Rules to correctly serve gzip compressed CSS and JS files.
# Requires both mod_rewrite and mod_headers to be enabled.

# Serve gzip compressed CSS files if they exist and the client accepts gzip.
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.gz -s
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.css $1\.css\.gz [QSA]

# Serve gzip compressed JS files if they exist and the client accepts gzip.
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.gz -s
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.js $1\.js\.gz [QSA]

# Serve correct content types, and prevent mod_deflate double gzip.
RewriteRule \.css\.gz$ - [T=text/css,E=no-gzip:1]
RewriteRule \.js\.gz$ - [T=text/javascript,E=no-gzip:1]

# Serve correct encoding type.
Header append Content-Encoding gzip
# Force proxies to cache gzipped & non-gzipped css/js files separately.
Header append Vary Accept-Encoding