Greetings all, apologies up front for the long message. I searched
through newsgroups and websites for answers with no luck.
I installed the 8.1.6 personal edition software (just the client
portion) on a Win98 machine, and my system now hangs on startup. I've
gone through numerous MS KnowledgeBase troubleshooting pages, with no
luck. I can't even start the system in safe mode from the hard disk
(although I can get to a command prompt). I am able to start in safe
mode using Norton rescue disks that I maintain.
When I start the machine, it goes through its BIOS startup stuff, does
the memory count, etc., and then gives me a blue screen of death,
with: "A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C02A27A8 in VXD
VWIN32(05) + 000012D0"
I press the space bar, and the system goes back to a blank screen
(normal part of startup), but then gives me an error message "EXPLORER
caused an invalid page fault in module EXPLORER.EXE at 0187:00401f31"
If I click OK, the machine just hangs at that blank screen.
If I try to start in safe mode, I get a different error message:
"EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in module EXPLORER.EXE at
0167:00401f31"
I've tried REM-ing the Oracle statements that were added to
AUTOEXEC.BAT, but that makes no difference. I've tried starting with
system.ini and win.ini disabled but that makes no difference. I've
also tried replacing EXPLORER.EXE with a fresh copy, to no avail.
I'm pretty sure the installation of the Win98 Oracle client is the
culprit. I can boot into safe mode using the Norton rescue disks, and
can start the universal installer, but the installer indicates that I
don't have any components installed, even though the files exist.
And, no Oracle items appear in the Add/Remove programs window. Should
I just delete all Oracle files? Won't the registry entries remain?
Am I way off-base with my assumption that the Oracle software is the
problem?
