Re: Oracle8 for NT w/SP3 & SP4 installed - install + operational problems

Hi Larry,

    I have installed Oracle 8 on five different NT boxes and all are in production use with no problems. However,I did have problems on one NT box. My local MSCE discovered that the bad guy had been initially configured as a Backup Domain Controller. When it was decided to use the box as a database server NT was reinstalled, Oracle installed, and then our problems began.

    It turns out that if the box was ever used as either a Primary Domain Controller or a Backup Domain Controller and is "demoted" to a standalone server that the system disk should be reformatted in order to purge all vestiges of the domain controller stuff, for if not thou shalt have an unreliable system!

    Based on my experience I would start looking at NT rather than Oracle as the source of your problems. (Incidentally, for what its worth I haven't heard anything good about SP4.)

regards

Jerry

Larry Morley wrote in message <366230D2.EDA898FE_at_albany.net>...
>Hi,
>
>When attempting to install Oracle8 (8.0.4, actually) on NT4 w/SP3
>loaded, I've had a lot of problems so far, but (at least as far as I
>can tell) I've got one installation that's more-or-less working, by
>creating a database and the Net8 files (tnsnames, sqlnet & listener)
>manually. All of the "assistants" were buggy & unstable under NT4 w/
>SP3, and the documentation's "search" applet routinely crashed both
>Netscape & IE, making it really difficult to figure out what I needed
>to do to get Oracle running. The installation program's database
>creation script (on my CD, anyway) has a syntax error in it.
>
>Now, trying to install on NT4 w/SP4 loaded (the other had SP3),
>things are even worse. The Net8 assistant, for example, doesn't work
>at all; same with the other java-based stuff - the JVM ("java.exe")
>generates a trap D (access violation) before the "assistant" is even
>done loading. The "information navigator" in the HTML based doc-
>umentation doesn't work at all, either. On the machine w/SP3, I
>still cant stop & start an instance without having to reboot the
>machine - some part of Oracle (I haven't been able to track down
>which, yet) goes beserk, eats a ton of memory, and almost every
>available CPU cycle (it's so bad that it takes over 15 minutes to
>bring the machine down cleanly).
>
>I've got to install a new copy of NT4 on a machine anyway, and I'm
>considering attempting the Oracle installation <before> loading the
>service pack(s), but even if this works, it isn't great - it'd mean
>I'd have to essentially reinstall NT on every machine I wanted to
>install Oracle on. I checked to make sure that the JVM was the most
>recent from Sun (it is), and I've tried this on other machines with
>the same results. The assistants don't work correctly on '95 OSR2
>either. Since this happens everywhere I've tried it, it can't just
>be me, but I cant find anyone else who's having the same problems
>(or at least, who's talking about it in the newsgroups). I can't
>get a response out of Oracle, either.
>
>I'd really like to have an alternative to SQL server, especially
>one that's cross-platform. But this is turning out to be more
>trouble than it's worth. There's no way I could in good consience
>turn this loose in a customer's production environment at this
>point.
>
>Any ideas? Thanks in advance - I really appreciate it.
>
>Larry Morley
Received on Tue Dec 01 1998 - 07:29:53 CST