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We have a Windows 2008 R2 with Oracle11g and I need to uninstall the server and to reinstall again. I was following this Oracle Uninstall guide here:
http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/misc/ManualOracleUninstall.php

Everything was going fine untill the step:

  • Delete the "C:\Oracle" directory, or whatever directory is your ORACLE_BASE.

The problem here is that I am unable to remove that directory?!

I've noticed that when R-Click->Properties the "Read Only" attribute of the folder is checked but disabled. (Now I know that that means that the attributes on the files inside the folder are READ ONLY and the folder itself is NOT). However when I remove the RO attribute, Windows spends several minutes to remove all of the Read Only attributes on the files inside the folder.. but then when i click OK the window closes, and everything is back to Read Only!!

read only disabled

I even tryed to remove those attributes frome the CMD as shown in the image bellow:

attrib

And again it spends 2-3 minutes to do the job and then the RO attribute is checked again...

Does anyone have experienced anything similar and perhaps know any suggestion regarding this issue on how can i fix this odd behavior?

UPDATE 12.01.2012:

I've succeed to delete the folder by detaching the hard drive reattaching it on another PC and deleting the folder from there. However the whole Windows 2008 crashed when I attached the HDD back to its original PC and I have to re-install everything all over again. Luckily the server was a test server only. And YES btw, the Windows repair option from the installation CD does not work :P.

Unless someone knows the REAL WAY on how to uninstall Oracle 11g, so far I can only say that this is an answer on how to NOT uninstall Oracle.

Shane Madden
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Spirit
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My experience has been that box is checked and dimmed even on empty folders that are not read-only. I have always considered it a display anomaly. I would say that the problem is elsewhere. Perhaps resetting the permissions and owner on the folder to your account full control would be a good start.

Using a tool like SysInternals' Process Monitor is usually a good start for tracking down these issues.

Greg Askew
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  • Well... I was using the Administrator account, and that was also the account from which the Oracle was installed in the first place.. – Spirit Jan 12 '12 at 12:44
  • I even tried to delete the folder via CMD using C:\>del /F "D:\Oracle" and absolutely nothing happened... – Spirit Jan 12 '12 at 12:51
  • Thanks for the note on Process Monitor... I should definitely start using it – Spirit Jan 12 '12 at 12:56
  • The Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) is definitely one of those unique beasts. Even after uninstalling a given client platform/version, the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) may and usually does have files left over. You may want to check that folder structure for log files, sometimes there are error messages: C:\Program Files (x86)\Oracle\Inventory\logs. It may be a windows service that does not release until the machine is restarted. – Greg Askew Jan 12 '12 at 15:32
  • It is still a mistery to me?! The step at the guide says: "Delete the "C:\Oracle" directory, or whatever directory is your ORACLE_BASE" My oracle base was D:\Oracle. After several unsuccessfull attempts to delete the folder (I did restart the PC several times) I attached the HDD on another PC and deleted the folder. .. .. And upon reattaching the drive the whole system crashed with bootable error code: "\Windows\System32\winload.exe The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt". – Spirit Jan 13 '12 at 07:40
  • Well I deleted a folder located in D: partition and NOT C:. It still bugs my mind on what went wrong there. :S – Spirit Jan 13 '12 at 07:41