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Oracle Troubleshooting

Oracle will not start up automatically

Symptom:

After the server is rebooted, Oracle does not start up automatically.

Possible Causes and Remedies:

The Possible Causes and Remedies are different for Oracle 7 and Oracle 8, be sure to use the appropriate section.

Oracle 7 - Things to check:

1. Check that it is possible to start Oracle manually. If not then address that problem first.

2. Check in the directory ‘{ORACLE_HOME}\Database’ that the command file ‘strt<SID>.cmd’ exists. If it does not exist then create it. It should contain the following single line:

{ORACLE_HOME}\bin\oradimXX.exe –startup -sid <SID> -usrpwd <internal-password> -starttype srvc,inst –pfile <full-init-file-pathname>

Then review the Oracle services (see next item, below).

3. Go to Start > Control Panel > Services, and check that the services ‘OracleService<SID>’ and ‘OracleStartService<SID>’ both exist.

• If neither service exists then create them both using:

oradimxx -new -sid <SID> -intpwd ORACLE -startmode AUTO -pfile <full-init-ora-filename>

• If only ‘OracleStart<SID>’ does not exist, then create it using:

oradimxx -delete -sid <SID>
oradimxx -new -sid <SID> -intpwd ORACLE -startmode AUTO -pfile <full-init-ora-filename>

4. Check that the services ‘OracleService<SID>’ and ‘OracleStartService<SID>’ are both set to start automatically.

5. Check that the command file ‘{ORACLE_HOME} \ Database \ strt<SID>.cmd’ will successfully start the database. If it does not (and the file contents are as outlined above) then a registry setting may be incorrect. Find the registry key corresponding to the service for starting Oracle ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ OracleStart<SID>’ and check the ‘ImagePath’ is valid. (For instance, if Oracle has been reinstalled on a different disk then the drive letter may be incorrect.)

Oracle 8 - Things to check:

1. Check that it is possible to start Oracle manually. If not then address that problem first.

2. Go to Start > Control Panel > Services, and check that the service ‘OracleService<SID>’ exists and is set to auto-start.

3. Try recreating the instance (this will also create the service ‘OracleService<SID>’ if it does not exist):

   oradim -delete <SID>
oradim -new -sid <SID> -intpwd oracle -startmode AUTO -pfile <full-init-ora-filename>

This will recreate the instance and should start it.

4. As a final resort, check in the registry that the database settings are correct. Look under ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ ORACLE\ HOME0’ the keys of interest are:

Whilst these values can be changed manually, it is probably safer to use the ‘oradim’ commands above to recreate the instance. Only edit the registry directly as a last resort.