Platform: 64 bit Windows 7 standardized install in a strictly controlled environment. I have admin rights on my own machine.
Issue: I've been using Visual Studio to connect to an Oracle database hosted in another building (to build and maintain a web app) for over a year now without issue. Using this I was able to run the site locally connected to both dev and prod databases and everything worked fine. Yesterday suddenly the connection stopped working. When I checked my ODBC settings the ODBC screen showed dev and prod connections, then locked up when I tried to test the connection. After closing the ODBC manager and restarting it, both of those ODBC connections disappeared. When I clicked "Add..." I now only see two SQL Server drivers available, no Oracle drivers are listed. (if I go into Excel and try to connect to an external data source I can see Oracle, but not via the ODBC manager)
I can connect via SQL Developer without issue. It connects using a JDBC connection and works fine.
What I've Tried:
- Reinstalling the ODTwithODAC121024 client. Ran as administrator with virus scanner disabled. Returns the error shown in the screenshot below (hopefully it will appear). The path OraInstallXXXX-XX-XX.... changes with each execution. The path exists with each run and the jvm.dll file exists in that path each time. It's just not loading for some unknown reason. Never makes it to the OUI window, it just stops on this error within 30 seconds of running setup.exe.
- Installing Oracle 10g (installed successfully previously) and 12. The 12 version is 64 bit 12.1.0.2.0. Ran both as administrator with virus scanner disabled. Neither works. Both error out with the exact same error message as above.
- I tried reinstalling Java 8 u91 just in case that was an issue, but that didn't help at all. Command line java -version shows Java SE runtime 8 installed.
The problem seems to be that the Oracle installer is building a new set of install source files in the temp folder each time the installer runs, and part of the install tree is a bundled JVM, eliminating dependency on an external JVM. But for some reason it isn't loading that jvm.dll file, and I can't find any relevant discussion online for this specific error regarding the Oracle installer.
Has anyone encountered this type of error before? For two days I'm completely cut off from my databases and can't work.
Specifically I'm wondering if a group policy or other network push could have caused this to break, and if so what needs to change to get it working again.
Any help appreciated, many thanks in advance.