version 7 ociw32.dll can't delete

[MikeOliverAZ]

I have installed 8i (8.1.6) on Windows NT 4 sp5 and I have trouble accessing Oracle from my code because there is still an old copy of ociw32.dll in the system32 directory.

I can't delete it no matter what I try. The libraries I am useing find it instead of the oracle\bin\ociw32.dll and I am getting funky error messages and cannot get a cursor.

I know this is the problem because my same code had this problem on Windows 2000 Advanced Server but I was able to delete the system32 copy of ociw32.dll and everything started working, but I cannot find what is loading it on NT. I found references to it with MTS but I don't have MTS running.

I have ensured the oracle bin directory comes before the system32 directory in the path but that doesn't seem to help.

I have tried shutting down ever process I can and every service I can and still get the "Access Denied...in use" message when I try to delete.

On W2k I could delete only from the command prompt, but that doesn't work on NT.

At a loss

Mike_Oliver@morningstarsystems.com

 

[karluk]

There are a couple of things to try that have sometimes worked for me. See if you can rename the file. That may work better than a direct delete. If that doesn't work I would try modifying all your Oracle services to be manual startup and then rebooting. With any luck that will prevent the file from ever getting allocated. Of course be sure to remember to switch back to automatic startup later.

 

[MikeOliverAZ]

Thanks, tried all that an no joy. I also searched for any file with 'ociw32' in it and found only two, one j709.dll and mtxoci.dll and I renamed them both with no affect on ociw32.dll, it is still loaded at bootup and cannot be deleted.

I believe the only way is to register a startup script that deletes it, like an uninstaller would do on reboot after uninstall. So I am looking for that.

 

[MikeOliverAZ]

The answer can be found in the Windows NT forum, but in short boot from a floppy and delete the file, or if you have an alternate NT install which I did because I have been burned too many times with NT crashes, then use that...boy I have been at this long enough to remember floppies... ;-)