Chromatography Forum

Hello my name is Rudy I am a graduate student and working with a 2695 waters LC coupled with a 996 PDA. Recently the hard drive gave out received an imminent failure message. We have had this problem twice before and contacted the company from which we purchased it. I was hoping to avoid this so no time is lost. I have contacted the company for help however was told just to send it back they really didnt offer much help. It uses empower software. I connected the old hard drive to another computer to see if I could still salvage the empower program from the old hard drive. I was able to reach the login screen however the database field is blank. So when I try to open the software I receive a message of "failure to connect to database error ora-12538". I was wondering is it going to be possible to take everything from the old hard drive and put on a new one and what I need to look for so I can connect to the database. Or will I just have to send back to where the instrument was purchased. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You
Rudy

I don't know enough about the "nuts & bolts" of Empower to tell if permissions are keyed to a particular computer MAC address, or to a specific hard drive ID but --

-- if the drive hasn't totally failed, you might try cloning it (there are a number of freeware utilities out there that will do it) and then install the clone drive in the original computer.

Is this a stand alone installation, or client server?
I think your Empower files are corrupt (you could do a verify files), as the database field is empty.
This is due to a empty .ora file.

Ace

Ace,

This is a client server I believe. Forgive me I havent been working long with the system. Will cloning the drive as tom suggested help or if the files are corrupt Im pretty much out of luck.

Thanks
Rudy

If it's a client server situation (and this is either a "fat client" or a LAC/E), just get a new hard drive & standard configuration from your IT dept. Reinstall Empower on it, readd any instruments and everything should be there as the database does not "live" on the clients.

Note - if it is a Waters LAC/E, you should try to get the same make and model of hard drive as what failed. They're available from third party sources for far less than Waters charges for them. If you want to use a LAC/E restore CD-R, this is important. If this is the route you choose, know that the older the restore media is, the longer it will take to get things back to normal as you will have Windows updates to plow through, in addition to the particular requirements of your LAN's naming, IP assignment and other policies.

If it's a client server, then you would be lucky.
All the data is on the server side, so no loss on that.

Do a standard installation of your OS with the new HD, make sure the PC names is exactly the same, install empower on the new HD in your client, copy a tnsnames.ora from a working client and you should be fine.

Ace