Oracle Client Installer Fails on Windows 7 64 bit

You'll love this one! :)

Problem:
Trying to install the Oracle Client on your Windows 7 PC, it checks the Prerequisites and then vanishes.
Many web pages suggest that the installer will log it's progress to C:\Program Files\Oracle\... - this is not the case. It actually logs to %USERDIR%\AppData\Local\Temp\OraInstall..TIMESTAMP..

But in this case, the logs do not show anything is wrong!

Instead you have to look in %USERDIR%\AppData\Local\Temp\ for files with a name like hs_err_pidNNNN.log (NNNN is a number) - these are Java HotSpot exception dump files.

In this file I found errors showing an error in SHLWAPI.dll, which gave a stack trace ending in:

Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code)
j  sun.awt.shell.Win32ShellFolder2.getLinkLocation(JJZ)J+0
j  sun.awt.shell.Win32ShellFolder2.getLinkLocation(Z)Lsun/awt/shell/ShellFolder;+20
j  sun.awt.shell.Win32ShellFolder2.isDirectory()Z+69
j  sun.awt.shell.Win32ShellFolder2.isDirectory()Z+79

This gives us a clue: the error is something to do with a link. Could that be a folder shortcut? A bit of Googling yielded that this was, in fact, the case.

So here's the solution:

Delete any folder shortcuts from your Windows Desktop. Re-run the installer.

Fixed.

I am really not a fan of Oracle OR Java. This type of thing reflects my general experience with Oracle and Sun technology.

Enough said...
at

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:22 am

    Thanks for the awesome tip!

    This type of random (and seemingly unrelated issue) is the main reason that I consider most Oracle products to be inferior. Why should shortcuts to folders on my desktop have anything to do with installing the Oracle client? This is madness!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown5:13 pm

    Definitely agree - I don't like to be negative, so I just try and avoid all Oracle products at all costs! :) Even use mariadb instead of mysql these days

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:22 pm

    Hi, I just hit this issue, removing my shortcuts seems to have fixed it (thankfully I run a fairly minimalist desktop).

    Really glad I stumbled across your blog, cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown6:00 am

    Yep this is still a bug in the latest installer. My colleague at work hit this very issue last week! Oracle!!!!

    ReplyDelete