Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Today i got a call from one of my good friend who was trying to install Oracle 11g on Windows 7 platform (And was very furious about — Why oracle website don’t have version 10g available anymore, after the release of latest 12c … 🙂 … ) and was getting errors during pre checks during OUI calls.

Exact Error:
On  Step 7 of 10,

All Prerequisite Checks fail.

Physical Memory                        Failed
Available Physical Memory         Failed
Swap Size                                  Failed
Free Space                                 Failed
Architecture                                Failed
Environment variable PATH        Failed

Clicking on the more details link, shows:
– PRVF-7531 : Physical memory check cannot be performed on node “machine-name”
– Cause: Could not perform check of physical memory on the node indicated.
– Action: Ensure ability to access the node specified and view memory information.

With many errors related to Physical/Swap Size, initially i thought that i could be due to insufficient memory on the system, But he has 4GB of RAM available.
Next i asked if he is trying to install the software on any Admin controlled machine, and my guess was right – He was.

So, all of these errors left us bewildered and with very less details available. Ultimately, MOS came to rescue.
Found one of the Metalink note for his issue — Doc ID 1086063.1

Cause
The Workstation or Server services have not been started.

Solution
Make sure both the “WORKSTATION” and “SERVER” services are started.
Rerun the setup program.
Now all the Prerequisite Checks Succeed.

– The Workstation or Server services need to be started for Oracle to communicate with the machine, to make sure all the prerequisite checks are performed.
– It has been reported, the TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service should also be started, to pass the Pre-Req checks.

Found SERVER service disabled on his machine and is the reason which is obstructing the pre checks to complete.