We came across HotFix 2316513 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2316513)
which addresses an issue with a Path variable reference being
inaccessible. This potentially fit our scenario since we append the
System Path Variable with the UNC
to configure the Network Oracle client on the Windows 7 machines.
We
ruled out the HotFix as a fix since it specifies that the HotFix does not apply
to Universal Naming Convention (UNC) entries in the PATH system environment
variable. This caveat came with the following article which provides more
information regarding UNC paths:
We don’t necessarily see the error message in the title of this
article (The Network path was not found) but in the Cause section
of the article, it specifies:
“A system path that contains a UNC path
may cause severe system problems and severe software problems. Therefore, a
system path that contains a UNC path is unsupported.”
The recommended workaround is:
“To work around this issue, delete the UNC paths from the system
path variable. If the UNC paths must be added to the environment variables, use
the user path environment variable.”
