Re: how to deinstall oracle cleanly?

From: Ed Stevens <nospam_at_noway.nohow>
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:03:14 -0600
Message-ID: <2e49q0dqaj3dkupqh3tp1fruobrps89qhs@4ax.com>

Reply embedded ...

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:50:36 -0800, "Jim Cheng" <jinxcheng_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

>Try the following steps:
> a.. Shutdown and drop the database using SQL * plus
>$sqlplus /nolog
>SQL>connect / as sysdba
>SQL>shutdown immediate
>SQL>exit
>

Bzzt! That shuts down the db, but doesn't DROP it.

> a.. remove following directories/files:
>app/oracle_admin/$ORACLE_SID
>oradata/$ORACLE_SID
>$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/init$ORACLE_SID.ora
>$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/lk$ORACLE_SID
>$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/orapw$ORACLE_SIDGood Luck!Jim Cheng

Bzzt! That only removes some specific db related files, not Oracle itself. And it removes them from a Unix system, not the Window system the OP asked about. And it assumes whatever files were placed in a directory 'app/oracle_admin ...' which is certainly not a given but simply local standard.

There is a lengthy paper on MetaLink about how to wipe Oracle from a Windows system (running de-install from the Oracle Universal Installer doesn't even begin to get the job done). As others have pointed out, it boils down to

1 - stop all Ora* services
2 - delete the registry key HKLM\software\oracle
3 - delete the Oracle registry keys from HKLM\software\odbc
4 - delete the Oracle registry keys from HKLM\Current Control

Set\services
5 - delete all Oracle directories from your hard drive. You may need to stop the service Distributed Transaction Coordinator to release locks on one of the dlls -- I belive it's CORE32.dll or something similar.
6 - remove oracle references from you PATH.

This may still leave some obscure references deep in the guts of the registry, but I've never found that to be a problem, and I have followed the above procedure dozens of times.

>"Christoph Kukulies" <kuku_at_accms33.physik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote in message
>news:30hio9F2vr56aU1_at_uni-berlin.de...
>>I had a 9.0.1 on a win2003 server recently and today I tried to install
>> 10.1.0 on that machine.
>>
>> Somehow deinstallation of 9.0.1 which was oin that machine before
>> did not work smoothly. I tried to remove registry entries but
>> could not remove all for some reason.
>>
>> During installation of 10g I was told that an instance (ORCL) was already
>> there and I should use another name. Anyway, to make it short, the 10g
>> installation failed. I have an empty pfile directory in admin\orcl\pfile
>> and would like to start over the 10g installation without
>> having to reinstall the whole OS.
>>
>> Any clues how to totally get rid of any traces of Orcale and get a clean
>> environment to start a fresh installation?
>>
>>
>> --
>> Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kukulies (at) rwth-aachen.de
>
Received on Wed Nov 24 2004 - 08:03:14 CST