Oracle 10g on Windows 7 64-bit machine

Hi,

I am not a DBA but since the DBA in our team is out sick and this is urgent I thought this forum could help me. I tried to install oracle 10g on my PC which has windows 7 64bit OS. My first question is that when we install oracle client on any machine is an entry made in windows registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE
Because there is no such entry on my machine. Is that a red flag?
Also, when I installed oracle client from the CD, there was no TNSNAMES.ora file created by default in the ADMIN folder. I went and placed one in there. Is a default file always created the first time we install the client?

Secondly, when I try to connect crsytal reports 2008 to oracle, it throws the ORA 12154 error.

Please help!!

I understand you are intalling Oracle client in that machine, is that correct?

Have you set ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID before attempting the connection?

Can you PING the target database server?

Can you TNSPING the target database?

Yes I am able to TNS PING the target database. Where do I need to set ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID and what should their entries be?

If you haven't found so far, you need to set the environment variables in system variables area.

Right click on My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> Syatem Variables

Regards,