“No message file” problem with Oracle client

Question

I have installed Oracle Client 11g R2 Win64 on Windows 7 x64. However, running tnsping (without parameters) yields the following output:

C:\Users\stefan.moebius>tnsping

TNS Ping Utility for 64-bit Windows: Version 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on 01-APR-2011 17:06:17

Copyright (c) 1997, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

TNS-03502: Message 3502 not found; No message file for product=NETWORK, facility=TNS

What's wrong?

I tried settings ORACLE_HOME, as that's mentioned around the net, but that didn't help. Looking at what tnsping is doing using ProcMon shows that it actually does find the file

C:\develop\oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1\network\mesg\nlus.msb

Answer 1

I had a similar issue, although nlus.msb did exist under %ORACLE_HOME%\network\mesg\, there were seven more msg files missing. Apparently this was due to an incomplete client installation, and I had copied these file across from another machine with the same version/configuration and got rid of the issue.

TNSPING

TNS Ping Utility for 64-bit Windows: Version 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on 17-FEB-2
012 10:00:23

Copyright (c) 1997, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Message 3511 not found; No message file for product=NETWORK, facility=TNSMessage
 3512 not found; No message file for product=NETWORK, facility=TNSMessage 3513 n
ot found; No message file for product=NETWORK, facility=TNSMessage 3509 not found; No message file for product=NETWORK, facility=TNS

Answer 2

I do know the TNS-03502 message is telling you that tnsping without arguments is not legal. Do you get the same message ("message nnnn not found...") if you supply a valid TNS alias to the command?

As for the message error, the only thing I can think of is a permission issue with the user running the tnsping command and the Oracle message files. Setting ORACLE_HOME on windows boxes is unnecessary and often causes problems - that value should be set up in the registry when you installed it.