Possible 9i Incompatibility with latest MS Windows Patches

I have just discovered that Oracle 9i (9.2.0.7) does no longer start on a Windows XP PC where it used to run fine for quite some time. The system service "OracleOraHome92Agent" fails to start (with no error message in the system protocols), and the TNS Listener will not run afterwards.

The only obvious changes that I have recently made to the system are:

1.) Installing the August patches for Windows XP and Office 2003; and 2.) Updating the Java JRE and JDK from1.5.0_07 to 1.5.0_08.

However, the Agent service still does not start even after uninstalling the Windows patches (and also the new JRE+JDK).

As I have not yet found info about a known incompatibility between Oracle 9i and the latest MS patches (or possibly Java 1.5.0_08), please be warned that installing them could cause 9i to no longer start!

1.)
Has anyone also observed such an error?
(I am curious to verify it is really the MS patches or Java that
disables 9i, or if it is just a coincidence on my machine.)

2.)
As uninstalling the patches and Java does not re-enable 9i, what would you suggest to get Oracle back running? Can I simply over-install or will that destroy my existing data? I have searched Oracle's Tahiti Docs for this topic found no match for over-installing an existing (but possibly broken) installation.
(Ok, it's not a production machine, but I would still like to recover
9i without losing the existing data.)

Jens Received on Tue Aug 15 2006 - 14:00:53 CDT