I recently installed VS dot net on Windows XP professional edition. Then I installed Oracle 8i.

After installation I was not able start Oracle 8i's service coz, it gave me the error "Error No. 1053 : The service did not respond to the start or control request...".

I loaded the db manually using the svrmgrl utility. Now comes the problem. When i try to connect to the db using Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle, It gives me the error, " Test connection failed because of the error in initializing the provider ". I am really stuck in this.
Kindly help :-)

Which version of mdac do you have installed ?

Thanks for your reply. I am using MDAC 7.0 .

Infact i rectified the problem by following the KB of MSDN.

http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q264/0/12.ASP

Thanks a lot for ur support

Good - normally these type of problems are associated with a problem with the mdac installation.