Oracle on Windows Patching tips

By Mark Sorger

Tips for Doing Oracle Installs/Patches

There are several things to look for when installing and patching on Windows. Some are in the documentation, and some are not. Some tips and suggestions follow.

• Stop all Oracle Services First
  
  Anything like the OracleServiceSID, Oracle Listener, and any other Oracle service needs to be stopped, or there will be open DLLs that cannot be replaced by the Installer.

• Stop the Windows �Distributed Transaction Coordinator Service�
  
  This Windows service Coordinates transactions that span multiple resource managers, such as databases, message queues, and file systems, and as such may have Oracle files/dlls open.

• Stop any Antivirus Software or backup Agents.
  
  This is to both improve performance of the install/upgrade as well as to keep the Antivirus or Backup Software from locking up any files/dlls.

• If you get errors specifying open DLLs, you can find them�
  
  If the Oracle installer reports a specific DLL being open, you can find out what has that DLL open using the TASKLIST utility.
   
  Tasklist /m filename.dll
   
  will return all the processes that have that DLL open.
  
  You can then kill them using the taskkill utility if need be.

• The ORACLE_HOME environment variable
  
  The ORACLE_HOME environment variable will not get reset properly by an upgrade. More likely, it will be blank, since the Oracle Installer clears it out by default. This can cause TNS Protocol Adapter errors when trying to start the Listener, ODBC datasources to fail, as well as other problems. So, it is a good practice to check this following any upgrades.
  
  Oracle recommends you not set ORACLE_HOME at all�.

• The PATH environment variable
  
  The last Oracle Product installed will be the first thing in the PATH. You can change this with the Environment Tab in Oracle Universal Installer.

• Use LSNRCTL to create the Listener Service
  
  When you first install or upgrade to a new release, you will notice there is no OracleListener Windows Service. The first time you run LSNRCTL from the command prompt, provided you have a good listener.ora file, it will create it for you.

• Open DLLs � when all else fails�.
  
  If you cannot locate what is locking a dll, then set all the Oracle Services to �manual� and reboot the server.