Oracle 8i and 11g export compatibility

I couldn’t wait for the x64 version of Oracle 11g for Vista so I downloaded and installed the x32 version and installed it under Vista x64.  The install went perfectly and the management web site worked flawlessly, I don’t have a metalink account so I couldn’t configure that portion of the install.

I had a database export that was created in 10g and needed it in an 8i export format, so these are the steps I performed:

1. import 10g Oracle .dmp file into 11g
2. create a Windows 2000 VM and install Oracle 8i
3. open port 1521 on the 11g Oracle server
4. create a TNS names entry for the 11g server in Windows 2000
5. from the Windows 2000 VM use the export command to connect to the 11g server and export the data

No. 2 caused me the most grief and should have been easy right, well apparently a bug exists in the Oracle 8.1.6 installer and when you run setup it runs and then exits.  A bug exists in that version of the product and these are the steps you must do to get setup to run (after finding this forum post):

1. copy the installation CD to a directory in your TMP folder
2. search the directory for a file named symcjit.dll and rename it to symcjit.old
3. run setup from the install/win32 folder

Everything was great after that and got my Oracle 8i dump file which I required.

REFERENCES
ORACLE 8i BUG:1507768 INSTALLER FAILS WHEN RUNNING ON NEW PENTIUM 4 (IV) PROCESSORS
ORACLE 8i BUG:1507946 INSTALLER FAILS WHEN RUNNING ON NEW INTEL PENTIUM 4 (IV) PROCESSORS