Oracle has a "Provisioning Daemon" that runs jobs that are pre-populated in the oracle install. Now, apparently, if there is a mismatch in date settings (say, from having the wrong time settings when setting up Oracle) this job template will always be in the past, and consequently, the daemon will try to start a new job, until it consumes 100% and croaks. Fixing the time issue and restarting the server won't help, as the 'bad' jobs are still waiting there when the server comes up.

The solution is to

• Stop the console
• Run
  create table mgmt_job_bad as select * from sysman.mgmt_job where job_name = 'PROVISIONING DAEMON';
  delete from sysman.mgmt_job where job_name = 'PROVISIONING DAEMON';
  commit;
• Restart the installation.
• Review the mgmt_job_bad to see what needs to be done.

Caveat: Those jobs were put there for a reason - you should get to know exactly what went wrong before doing this in a production environment.

Srvany is the old (pre-Vista/2008) way of wrapping any exe or cmd in a service container. (This is needed to provide the service start, stop, pause hooks that services need, and normal exes don't provide)

On Windows 2008 Server and Windows Vista, Instad of installing the server using srvany.exe, you simply create a Scheduled Task that is set to trigger on system startup.

Program/Script should be the
ChemAxonJChemcartridgeserver.bat
argument simply
start

Be sure to specify startup directory
ChemAxonJChemcartridge

and "run wheter user is logged on or not". You should be able to run the task as SYSTEM.

In Task "Properties/Settings" I would suggest you set "run task as soon..." to true, and specify failure recovery policy.

So, you set your backup job up, and just as you click on the schedule tick box, you get this weird message:

"You have to enable the Password Storage option on the programm's General Options tabsheet and select Obscured as password storage method to execute scheduled backups. Otherwise the backup task cannot log into the database."

Huh? What 'programms' Options? Ah. The button "Open options"! Do that, and go to "General Options", "Store Passwords" and "Obscured":

Now, just "Close" and get on with setting your scheduled job up.

When you "Save Project" the next hurdle comes along, with another confusing text:

"Enter user name and password for the account under which the task will be executed."

This is actually asking for the windows account the scheduled task will run under, not the MySQL account it should be using.

Also note that the command line for the scheduled job will make use of the stored connection you're using to set the job up - and each mysql connection is stored under the current windows user - so you better save the connection and set the job up on the MySQL and Windows accounts you will be using to run it under.

So, obvious once you worked your way thru it, as always...

Other points of interest:

• How connections are stored
  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/administrator/en/mysql-gui-appendix-store-connections.html
• The only documentation of MySQL Administrator Command Line parameters I've found:
  http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=7843

• You might stop on the compatibility check saying there is no IIS. The problem here is that you need a certain set of role services installed, including the II6 compatibility services.
• You might stop on a message saying "SQL Server Edition Operating System Compatibility Some components of this edition of SQL Server are not supported on this operating system." - the problem is that the SQL installer does not expect the Windows Web Server 2008 licensing information. Hotfix here.
• If you supply a Local or Domain Account, you might get problems with the service not starting, and install failing. Be sure it has the right permissions, or just install as 'Local System' to get things up and running, then change the service settings afterward - but be sure to do it thru the SQL Server Configuration Manager, as the account needs additional acl and policy permissions.
• Be sure to apply the latest Service Pack directly after installation.
• And by all means, be sure you have your firewall settings in order; SQL server runs on TCP 1433.