Conference orarep::nomahs::odbc_rdb_driver

    I have seen mails passing by saying that the service packs caused more
    evil than good. I'll try to locate that information. 
    
    Why didn't MS tell them  ;-) ?
    /Regina

    Well, the information was about NT. Service packs below 3 on 3.51
    could corrupt the registry and Service Pack 2 for V4.0 is blowing up a
    lot of things as well.
    
    Unable to locate any information for W95. Given the known problems with
    Service Packs, does it run without the Service Pack?
    
    /Regina
    

>    Unable to locate any information for W95. Given the known problems with
>    Service Packs, does it run without the Service Pack?
    
He didn't try to install it without the service pak yet.  I did ask him
to install it BEFORE installing the service pak as we have folks here that
have both installed, but they installed the driver first, then the service
pak and there aren't any problems.

Thanks for the information, though... it is good to have!!

Renee    

Hi,

I have more information on this customer's problem.  

Win95
MS Office 95, MS Office 97
Oracle Rdb ODBC (rdbwin95.exe) OR, Oracle ODBC drivers - no Rdb.

PROBLEM:

1.  Install Win95, service paks and patches, MS Office 95 -> system
is ok.  Then installs Rdb ODBC, and all is fine, that is both products
work until he tries to open the control panel icon.  System crashes with:
   "program performed an illegal operation,
    windows explorer causes a page fault in ..." - pop up window
containing error too small to see complete message.  

Microsoft says the above error is caused by a corrupted registry.
Fix is to reinstall Win95 which he has now had to do multiple times.

2.  Install Win95, service paks and patches, Rdb ODBC -> system is ok.
Then installs MS Office 95, and all is fine until... same as above.

So it appears as though the order of these 2 product installations
has something to do with the corruption.  The corruption only occurs
after the 2nd install.  However, he has other products installed such
as a terminal emulation pkg so seems more like the interaction of these
2 products rather than the 2nd installation of any product.

3.  Install Win95 vanilla (no service paks & patches), MS Office 97
and Rdb ODBC.  Same problem.  Error message a bit different with office 97.
Says "odbc installer, cannot install a resource...".  Solution the
same - reinstall win95.

4.  Am waiting for him to try:
    Install Win95 vanilla (no service paks & patches), MS Office 95
and Rdb ODBC.  This is what I have configured and control panel ok.

ORIGINAL PROBLEM:

He originally had a win95 system with service paks, patches, and MS 
Office 95.  All worked ok.  Then installed Oracle client software which
included odbc drivers for oracle.  No rdb odbc driver involved.  The 
same problem also occurred.  So, this problem occurred when using oracle 
odbc drivers too not just the rdb driver.  But he says he has gotten other 
odbc drivers to work from this pc.

What I would like him to try but he can't yet:
---------------------------------------------
This is all being done on a Packard Bell at home.  This system has
never run win 3.1 or rdb odbc.  However, at work, they have all Digital
PC's running win 3.1 and rdb odbc and ms office.  These all work fine.
I would like him to try installing win95 on one of the machines at
work along with ms office 95 and rdb odbc and see if that works.
Does this sound like a possible problem with the type of PC he has?
Afterall the original problem was with completely different drivers.
But he is not allowed to do this at work yet.  Only testing can
be done from home.

Bottomline, once he installs both ms office and rdbwin95.exe on a
win95 machine, double-clicking on the control panel always results in
a system crash and the reason is that the registry is corrupted.

One thing he noticed, he said that ms office adds the odbc administrator
to the control panel icon but our odbc driver software does not.  Instead
our software adds it to the programs menu.  I think this is expected
behavior but he wanted to mention it.

Does anyone have any ideas to help out?  Microsoft support has been
unable to help.

Thanks, Diane

    
    Hello,
    
    I had the same problem some time ago. I fixed it by removing a "CPL"
    (Control Panel Extension) file.
    
    I don't know anymore what the filename extactly was but it had to do
    with ODBC or SQL/Services.
    Search for *.CPL files and look for a file that is added during your
    ODBC installation. Just try it by renaming the suspected file and see what
    happens.
    
    I will reply again when I remember the exact filename.
    
    Regards,
    Vincent

    I just found my source again. I got the answer from the JCC Oracle Rdb
    listserver.
    Below I have copied the text from the listserver
    "JERREDE.US.ORACLE.COM" <JERREDE@us.oracle.com> said
    
    >       As for the problem you are having I believe was caused 
    >       by the ODBC Control panel located in the \windows\system 
    >       directory.  If you just delete the ODBCCP32.CPL control 
    >       panel you should be okay.  We notice this happening during our 
    >       beta testing.  Our installation does not put down the ODBCCP32 
    >       control panel any more so future customers will not run 
    >       into this problem.  It should only be happen to a customer 
    >       who was a beta tester and has upgraded to Windows 95 service
    pack 1. 
    >       These are the conditions in which I ran into the problem. 
    >       I have reported this problem to Microsoft. 
     
    >                               - Joe -
    
    Steve Wargo said:
    > Actually, I have gotten that same error ('invalid page fault' in
    > EXPLORER.EXE).  The solution I have found is to just delete the
    > ODBCCP32.CPL and copy the one from the MS ODBC SDK and everything is
    OK.
    
    Regards,
    Vincent

Hi Vincent!!

We really appreciate your input, but he isn't using the beta kit of ODBC,
but is trying to install a "freshly" pulled ODBC kit off the web.  We checked
his cpl files and we can play with them a little later, but they appear ok.


To others:

What the customer then asked is this:

He is installing the ODBC driver on a D: drive, not C:.  Does the Oracle 
installer care what drive it installs on, or where oracle$home is?

He is going to go home and try and install the ODBC driver on the C: drive
to see if that solves his problem... if it does I'll be relieved, but he'll
be mighty mad (not the words he used!).  Not sure why the drive would matter,
but I've seen more bizarre things happen.  If it isn't this, he will rename
the cpl files to see if that helps as well.

Thanks for all your help so far!  

Renee

    
    I've run the 2.10.1100 driver off of a D: drive on Windows95, 
    but I've had the installer/software get upset if you try to 
    products on both the C and D drives (probably since various 
    things make assumptions about where \orawin95 lives).  As 
    long as all the Oracle products are rooted from the same 
    device I don't think this will be an issue if he is using 
    the latest version (and if he is trying an old DEC Rdb
    version, I dunno).
    
    Regards,
    rcs
    

Thanks Richard.  

I believe he had the orawin95 directory on the D: drive too, so it may not
help, but asked him install on C: anyway.  The problem is the PC he is 
having all this difficulty with is at home.  So we talk to him at work and
wait a week before he calls back.

Renee

Customer called today with success story.  What did he do?  

He installed the ODBC driver on the C: drive, making C: the oracle home
directory instead of D:.

He also renamed the .cpl file, but after the install, since it was working
he renamed the .cpl file back to the original filename and everything still
works.  So it appears the problem was with installing it on a D drive
and not the C: drive.

Thanks for all the help and pointers!

Renee