Oracle throwing this error: could not open registry key SOFTWARE\Oracle\ocr

Question

I have an oracle installation that runs fine 95% percent of the time. But for some reason every day at a random time early in the morning (between 4:00am and 9:00am) I get the following error:

[ OCROSD][3248]utgdv:1:could not open registry key SOFTWARE\Oracle\ocr os error The system could not find the environment option that was entered.

[ OCRRAW][3248]proprinit: Could not open raw device

[ default][3248]a_init:7!: Backend init unsuccessful : [33]

[ CSSCLNT][3248]clsssinit: error(33 ) in OCR initialization

[ OCROSD][3248]utgdv:1:could not open registry key SOFTWARE\Oracle\ocr os error The system could not find the environment option that was entered.

It is odd that a registry error would happen at random times. Its not like my registry changes periodically throughout the day. Must it have something to do with the raw device not being available?

Anyone have any ideas? I am looking forward to your input.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I solved this by turning off flashback. I confirmed this was the issue by doing this:

sqlplus sys as sysdba
SQL> shutdown immediate;
SQL> startup mount exclusive;
SQL> alter database open;
alter database open
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-16038: log 3 sequence# 45 cannot be archived
ORA-19809: limit exceeded for recovery files
ORA-00312: online log 3 thread 1: 'C:\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\ORADATA\ORCL\REDO03.LOG'

At this point I turned off flashback. This might also solve the problem, but I didn't try it:
http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_ora_19809_limit_exceeded_for_recovery.htm

Answer 2

Looks like you are not alone and it may have something to do with ASM.

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=620261

You could watch it with Process Monitor to see exactly what process is looking for that registry key and see the events leading up to that query.

We just cleaned up a similar issue on one of our servers by reinstalling the client with the bare minimum services and features we needed.

Wish I could help you further.