XE beta install on windows xp - SOLUTION

Question

Hi All,
after trying to install the XE beta on a couple of windows xp (with sp2) domain connected machines, i think i can finally provide an outline on how to go about and do it successfully.
After all installations (no matter if the logged in account was a local administrator, domain administrator or a domain user with administrator rights) we would find that there was no database, and that the oradata folder was empty.
Here's what we did:
A. during installation (before clicking the 'finish' button) go to %install_folder%\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\config and copy the seeddb folder to another location.
B. once the installation's finished, open sql plus and try to connect as sysdba, twice. we had ora-28547 errors all throughout the log files (in config\log).
to resolve this do the following:
1. remove all path locations that point to other oracle installation on your machine (you can add them back later).
2. make sure that sqlnet.ora says (none) and not (NTS) on the SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES line.
now you can try and connect as sysdba (connect sys/pwd as sysdba).
C. if you connect successfully, just follow the scripts run by xe.sql, run them by hand, and see if you can coup with the errors that appear (mainly cause you didn't copy the seeddb folder back to the config dir).
the only file i couldn't find anywhere is dbmssml.sql (in rdbms admin) but everything seems to work even without it.
That's all.
if it doesn't work for you, post the logs/errors you get, and i'll try to help.

Answer 1

This post was very helpful. I was able to connect to sql*plus. I was still unable to connect to the home page though so I followed the following steps detailed in Post Go to Database Home Page Failure
1) Changed the 8080 port number:
Connect sys/password as sysdba
exec dbms_xdb.sethttpport(8087);
2)After this I was able to connect to the homepage but when I rebooted, I was again unable to connect to the homepage and when I connected to sql*plus I got the message "Connected to an idle instance" I tried typing "startup" at the SQL prompt and got the following error message:
ORA-01565: error in identifying file 'C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\serv
er\dbs/spfileXE.ora'
3)Still connected to sql*plus I executed the following statement:
create spfile from pfile='c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\conf
ig\scripts\init.ora';
File Created
4)Try "startup" again.
After this I was able to successfully login to the database.
Note:
I also changed my environment variable tns_admin to
C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\NETWORK\ADMIN
but I am not sure if this helped anything......