Rather than ask a question, I thought I would post a solution that took me some time with several install and uninstalls and trial and error to figure out. The Oracle documentation did not really help, Google is more useful for practical troubleshooting of Oracle.
1) If in doubt, consider uninstalling any and all Oracle apps and help and drivers, you name it. You can likely try skipping this step and only do it if you cant get it working or if you get some or other ORA error when you try and open "Run SQL Command Line" give you some error.
If you have changed any settings or installed or uninstalled anything, restart your machine!
2) Install OracleXE.exe using the default settings. Restart your machaine. Now run through the "Getting Started" document which unlocks the "hr" user and creates the MyApp web application.
3) Download (from the Oracle web site) and install and run the OLEDB drivers, ODAC101040.exe. Restart your machine.
4) Start a DOS window (Click on Start, Run, enter: Cmd). Then execute:
c:
cd c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\bin
and execute:
regoledb.bat c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server
And just to be paranoid also type in:
regsvr32 OraOLEDB10.dll
Restart your machine again.
5) Go to the control panel, System, and add the system environment variable: ORACLE_HOME with value c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server
and to the path appended the string:
;c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\bin
(There is some batch file in there that seems to set this, but it will only take effect in the local environment and wont fix the OLEDB error messages that you will get otherwise.)
Restart your machine. Lots of settings dont seem to take effect until you restart even if nothing tells you that you shoudl restart!
If you do not restart your machine, you will get error messages such as "OraOLEDBpus10.dll: module not found" etc.
Ok, so now run your OLEDB connecting VB or other app. When you connect, set:
Provider = OraOLEDB.Oracle
Location = (i set nothing in here, it likely assumes the local machine)
Data Source = XE
Port = 1521
Initial Catalog = HR
User Id = HR
Password = HR
The port is likely optional but the "XE" bit is the key.
And Voila! I managed to connect.
Seems so simple - ONCE YOU KNOW.
If this is of any use to anyone, please put a reply here.
Message was edited by:
user501404