How to install Oracle 11gR2 64-bit client on Windows 7

Installation of Oracle 11gR2 64-bit client on Windows 7 is even trickier compared to Oracle 32-bit client installation. In fact after some series of installations, I do recommend installing Oracle client 32-bit on Windows 7 64-bit version, unless you have solid technical restrictions of that. This will avoid various installation issues as well as some client software incompatibility issues. I give however below a short installation plan for Oracle 11gR2 64-bit client with possible issues you can encounter during and after it. Read also my other article for some more tips on that: Oracle 11gR2 client installation on Windows 7 troubleshooting.

Oracle 11gR2 64-bit client installation

1. Make sure you downloaded and use the proper version of Oracle client 11gR2 64-bit and Windows 64-bit version. The usual Oracle client download file is as following: win64_11gR2_client.zip
2. Unzip properly the downloaded archive with entire directory structure. Don’t laugh, since some people have problems exactly at this point.
3. Make sure you have the Windows “server” and “workstation” services started.
4. Make sure the Windows User you are going to use for the installation has local admin rights.
Yes, sometimes login on as a network domain user with admin rights is NOT enough for Oracle client 64-bit installation. The reason might be in extra network security policies that can applied in enterprises. Interesting enough that Oracle client 32-bit installation can work properly with the same domain user and the 64-bit version can be installed only using local admin user.
So, it’s best using a local administrator for installing Oracle 11gR2 64-bit client on Windows 7.
5. Start the software installation using Oracle Universal Installer (OUI):
setup.exe

Oracle 11gR2 client 64-bit Troubleshooting

Installation does not start
Ensure you properly followed steps: 1,2 and 3.

Installation crashes on the Prerequisite checks step
– In this case you probably will not find any installation log files.
– Ensure you properly followed steps: 1,2,3 and 4. Most probably you simply have to use Windows local admin user and not domain user with admin rights, try it.
– Try starting OUI from cmd utility that was “Run as administrator”. You can create a short cut to a command prompt and run it as administrator :
– setup.exe
or
– setup.exe –ignoreSysPrereqs (skipping some installation checks)

If nothing helps during the installation
Try to analyze the installation logs:
– C:\Users\<user name>\.oracle\logs  (created once Prerequisite Checks step is complete)
– C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory\logs  (created once the installation itself started).
After successful Oracle software installation
Some database tools might not be able to recognize properly the Oracle client installation. In this case set manually some environment variables in Windows 7:
In User variables:
ORACLE_HOME= C:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1
In System variables:
TNS_ADMIN= C:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1\network\admin
PATH= C:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1\bin;….

Issues with the client database tools

As an example, if after the Oracle client 64-bit installation you try to start your old favorite database tool and get an error like “Can not load oci.dll”, then probably using Oracle 32-bit client version can fix this error.
Further issues with 64-bit client regarding missing ORACLE_HOME path or tnsnames.ora file might come up. In this case try manually set ORACLE_HOME as Windows user variable and TNS_ADMIN as Windows system variable.Hope these tips will help somebody to fix Oracle 64-bit client installation issues. I’m looking for more of them in the comments below.