So, you want to install Oracle EE 8.1.7 on Windows XP. I've only done it on XP Pro, so if you have XP Home, YMMV. Unless you bought it (AFAIK), the first step would be to download the CD. You can find it here, in the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You have to create an account...

If you don't have a Pentium 4 processor, you can probably unzip and install it without any problems. You can probably even install it from a CD. But not if you have a Pentium 4...

I have a Pentium 4. So, using the internet, I found out how to make it work. You'll know you have a problem because when you run the setup.exe program (either \Disk1\setup.exe or \Disk1\install\win32), nothing will happen. Your hard drive light will flicker, you will hear computer-like noises, but nothing will happen. The program wll not crash. You will not get one of those "report this to Microsoft" boxes. It will just disappear from the task list.

This is perplexing. At leas it was, to me. Apparently there is a problem with the JIT compiler and P4s. So you'll have to fix it.

To do so, you have to follow these steps:

1. Copy the contents of the CD (if you have one) to your hard drive
   
   
2. Rename all instances of "symcjit.dll" to something else. I suggest renaming them to "symcjit.dll.hates.me", but really, just rename them to whatever. You will find 2 instances of this dll, buried deep in the installer directories.
   
   
3. Open Disk1\install\oraparam.ini with your favorite text editor and change the JRE_MEMORY_OPTIONS option so it looks like this:
   

   JRE_MEMORY_OPTIONS=-nojit -ms64m -mx128m

   
   
4. Proceed with the install
   

Now, the first time I tried to install, it failed miserably. I did a custom install and enabled everything. I'm not sure if that was P4-related or if my computer just went wonky. But it worked using the typical install option, so you might try that.

When the install finished, I got a "report this to Microsoft" crash box for java.exe. When I closed it, another popped up. I repeated about 15 times, then noticed that a DOS box had appeared on my taskbar. This will be Apache, trying to start something with java.exe (and failing). Close the DOS box. Go to the folder you installed the database into and search for "symcjit.dll" again. You will find 1 instance, if your path was the default, it's at ora81\Apache\jdk\jre\bin. Rename this one too. Now you can start Apache from the start menu, if you are so inclined...