Cry How To...

Uninstall Oracle 7.3

These notes apply to Oracle 7.3.x

The simplest way to remove Oracle is to run the Oracle installer:

Start > Programs > Oracle For Windows NT > Oracle Installer

and select to remove (uninstall) everything.

It is probably best to stop any Oracle services that are running since this will prevent some components from being removed. Also, expect some errors when removing components and be prepared to have to select some components individually to remove them.

The Oracle installer will not remove itself and there are some components that will not uninstall.

In order to completely remove all traces of Oracle the following additional steps will need to be taken:

1. Run regedt32 and delete the key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE

2. Delete the Oracle home directory ‘ORANT’.
3. Any database files will not have been deleted during the uninstall. If these were not under ‘ORANT’ and (and where thus deleted by the step above) then consider whether they need to be deleted.
4. Delete the profile directory

   c:\winnt\profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Oracle For Windows NT

   and

   c:\winnt\profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Oracle Enterprise Manager

   if the enterprise manager has been installed.

5. Some of the Oracle services may be left behind by the uninstall. Open ‘services’ on the control panel, make a note of which Oracle services remain and see the notes ‘How to remove a service’ to remove them.

These notes have been tested with Oracle 7.3.x under Windows NT 4.

This page represents one page of many pages of notes I made whilst working with Oracle 7 through to 10i. I now no longer work with Oracle databases, but hope that these notes will continue to be of benefit to others.