OBIEE 12c: Oracle Business Intelligence has stopped working

Ok, lets get this blog started then...

I've been playing with a new install of OBIEE 12c on Windows 2012 and I couldn't get the bi server to start correctly. I kept on getting the following error:

Error: oracle business intelligence has stopped working
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: BEX64
  Application Name: sawserver.exe
  Application Version: 12.2.1.0
  Application Timestamp: 5616f0d2
  Fault Module Name: yod.dll
  Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp: 50ff431d
  Exception Offset: 000000000001e940
  Exception Code: c0000005
  Exception Data: 0000000000000008
  OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.272.7
  Locale ID: 2057
  Additional Information 1: d406
  Additional Information 2: d406e47b17f73b5fc03376291226207b
  Additional Information 3: 7458
  Additional Information 4: 74581c46e97a8bc42cd289645d01850b

and this error:

Error: nqsserver.exe has stopped working
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: BEX64
  Application Name: nqsserver.exe
  Application Version: 0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp: 561bb059
  Fault Module Name: yod.dll
  Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp: 50ff431d
  Exception Offset: 000000000001e940
  Exception Code: c0000005
  Exception Data: 0000000000000008
  OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.272.7
  Locale ID: 2057
  Additional Information 1: d92a
  Additional Information 2: d92afc5ed82d4e5d1dbbd90e1ee4ae90
  Additional Information 3: 0ed0
  Additional Information 4: 0ed072c3fcb2518b6476270391ad9386

It turns out the issue was due to OBIEE picking up the wrong version of the yod.dll library.

What made my environment different from others?

My server also had the full EPM 11.1.2.4 stack installed,  The EPM instance contains several different versions of the yod.dll and my OBIEE biserver was picking up the wrong version of yod.dll because of the Windows path entries added by the EPM installer.

To fix the issue I created a batch script which sets only the Windows related paths and then calls the OBIEE start.cmd:

set PATH=C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem
call E:\Oracle\OBIEE\Oracle_Home\user_projects\domains\bi\bitools\bin\start.cmd

After this OBIEE started without any issues.