Gotta love Microsoft. Here's some instructions I got off this list from "Novice DBA" a while back on how to properly delete an Oracle Database on NT/2000:
Clearing up the System after an incomplete or improper installation of Oracle ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Database Installation involves a set of procedures which need to be followed in order to have a proper working installation. If we follow these procedures the Installation will be fine and usually problems related to improper installation do not arise. But it is not always possible to get a proper installation for the first time. This document is a troubleshooting guide which would help to clear off the mess created by an improper installation in a WindowsNT system. First we need to know that During installation Oracle writes into certain directories (which we would have specified during installation) and also into the WindowsNT registry. WindowsNT registry is a repository of information about all the installed products and configurations on that system. When we are installing Oracle a directory is created in the registry which is name oracle which is present in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/ In the case of an improper installation the problems faced are · We may not be able to uninstall the incomplete installation · We may succeed in uninstalling the incomplete installation but yet face problems with WindowsNT Services. · Every time we log into WindowsNT we may get an error 'at least one system service failed to start' which may be an Oracle service from the earlier installation. · We may get an error while creating a database 'the database with the name you specified already exists please chose another name' which again may be attributed to an improper un-installation.(I am not pretty comfortable with the Oracle's Un-installation utility because I feel it does not uninstall everything) Keeping the above points in mind it would be better if we know where exactly to look in case we are faced with such problems. When oracle is installed it makes entries in the following places 1. The first and the foremost- the directory in which we install the Oracle database (say D:\Ora8i) 2. The second is the inventory it maintains in the directory c:\program files\oracle 3. The third HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/ORACLE in the registry 4. The other place is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM . Inside this entry there are three nodes controlset1,controlset2 and currentcontrolset. These nodes in turn have 4 nodes out of which 2 are important to us. They are Enum and Services. The Enum node has got two nodes out of which the 'root' node is of great interest to us because it stores details about all the services that are running on a WindowsNT system. The other node of interest from the controlsets is Services. The services node has got a list of services running on a WindowsNT system. In case we need to clean up the system after an incomplete installation we can follow the following steps Delete the home directory where Oracle is installed Delete the folder C:\program files\oracle Note:- This clears off information about any other Oracle utility installed on that system. Delete the registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/ORACLE Warning:- This clears off information about any other Oracle utility installed on that system and you may not be able to run those programs again. Delete the Oracle Related services from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CONTROLSETx/ENUM/ROOT/ . They will be named with a prefix LEGACY_ORACLE... Note:- You will have to use regedt32.exe to invoke registry editor and not regedit. You will have to use the security menu and give permissions to yourself before deleting these entries. Else it will not work . It is to be noted that there are three control sets and all the three (in reality any 2) need to be cleared off these un-necessary entries. Delete the Oracle Related services from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CONTROLSETx/SERVICES . They will have a prefix 'Oracle'. ============================================================ I have also attached a document having the same contents Jared will this get a chance ?? joking?? coz I am a novice David A. Barbour Oracle DBA, OCP AISD 512-414-1002 Leslie Lu <leslie_y_lu@y To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ahoo.com> cc: Sent by: Subject: URGENT -- db already exist ??? [EMAIL PROTECTED] om 10/25/2001 04:10 PM Please respond to ORACLE-L Hi all, I created a 815 database on NT4. Since there is something wrong with it, I used db config assist to delete it. When I tried to create a database with exactly the same name, I got message that "db already exist." I already deleted entried in tnsnames and listener.ora. I must use that particular name. Where else does the name got logged? Thank you! Leslie __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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