Sounds like you had a problem while the Setup Support Files were being installed. Until this process has got near finishing you do not get any log files.

The most common reason for the Setup Support Files install to fail is a failure to install a pre-requisite component. You are not using Express Edition media so all pre-requisites are packaged with the SQL install media, and the SQL installer will automatically install any missing components.

Having said all this, I recently tried a SQL install on Windows 2008 and had a failure installing .Net 3.5 SP1. I needed to track down the .Net install log files (Google can help in this) and found that the command OCSETUP for component NetFx3 failed because option NetFx3 was unknown. This is very odd, as using OCSETUP with option NetFx3 to install .Net 3.0 is a standard part of Windows 2008. (The .Net 3.5 SP1 install will make sure that all of .Net 2.0, .Net 2.0 SP2, .Net 3.0, .Net 3.5 and .Net 3.5 SP1 are installed, and uses a mixture of .MSI files and OCSETUP to do this.) I have not done much more troubleshooting, but suspect that an update from Microsoft has killed off the ability to use OCSETUP to install .Net 3.0 on W2008.

I have run many .Net 3.5 SP1 installs on W2008 as part of testing FineBuild, and the Windows instance with the problem allowed .Net 3.5 SP1 to install OK until a MS patch update. My FineBuild test instances are typically way behind in MS patching, so I do not know if the problem is caused by a recently-issued patch.

My plan to confirm this is to build a new W2008 instance using just RTM media and rerun the .Net 3.5 SP1 install. This is easy to do with a new guest machine, I just need about 3 hours to do the build and the test.