Greetings community,
I'm almost brand new to Oracle, SQL, and databases but I'm teaching myself for a large work project. In other words, this is probably a stupid questions but one that I haven't been able to answer with all my Google-Fu. Last week I downloaded XE and SQL developer, and I have been banging my head over getting XE working. It installs but apparently not in the way it's supposed to. None of the instructions or guides that I have found match what I'm seeing and I haven't found anything similar in the forums. I've uninstalled and reinstalled XE multiple times, logged in as the admin and as a user running the installation as an admin, nothing changed. It still doesn't match. After install, when I click the Start menu, All Programs, the folder is titled OraDBHome18Home1 and has four subfolders:
All of the sites say to click on "Getting Started", or "Database Homepage", or "Oracle Database Home 18c Express Edition" (Which only shows up on my computer as an installation file, not as an application or link). Without those options, I can't "open" the program or follow any of the other online instructions for adding users, starting a database, etc. Of course, many of these guides are also woefully out of date, which doesn't help. Everything during the install looked correct, supposedly installed correctly, but nothing shows up where it's supposed to and none of the links in the folders work correctly. For example, just to see what would happen I tried creating a new database using the Configuration Assistant - which goes all the way through the wizard before getting a Java error when I click "finish" at the end. Much like with XE itself, I find myself constantly asking if there is an actual problem with the software or if I'm just an idiot who's doing it wrong. For the first week I assumed I was doing it wrong, and did so many searches... but nothing has helped so maybe it's not just me.
Some relevant details: I'm on a company owned laptop and I have the admin passwords, though I'm normally logged in as a User. The laptop is running Windows 7 Enterprise, 64 bit. I tried the installation logged in as the admin, logged in as a user with admin passwords, neither made any difference and the folder options are the same for both. At this point, I don't know whether it's a software issue, a hardware issue, a permissions issue, or something totally different and I could really use some help getting pointed in the right direction.
Thanks for taking the time to read.