Oracle not available error

After a long struggle of installing any Oracle XE on my windows XP I gave up and decided to create my database manually. The setup file provided by Oracle skips fast the Creation of Database services phase and completes. But OracleXEService does not get installed.

I've set evrything up, the directories, the service, Oracle_SID. All of them go normally. Then I connect t开发者_StackOverflow社区o sqlplus, to an idle instance:

sqlplus /nolog
connect / as sysdba

then I type

spool create_script.log

and then finally when I enter

@C:\create_script.sql;

I get error stating Oracle is not available. I've checked the task manager, oracle.exe is there. I've restarted the OracleServiceXE. Nothing helps. Many say I should check if ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME match. I wonder how should I know if they match or not?

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You will need to post more information. What does your DB create script look like? Are you seeing any errors in the alert log or other logs on your server?

The ORACLE_HOME you specify for your service in your listener.ora file should match what your actual ORACLE_HOME path is set to.