Preety, I have the same combinations as you do: Oracle, Windows 2000 and J2EE.
I downloaded the J2EE Tutorial which uses ant to help to compile and the Developer's Guide in the J2EE docs which does not use ant. Both are almost same. Right now I try to stay away with the ant and work on Developer's Guide. I am trying to work on converter example in Getting Started. The problem is that I can not compile it using userconf.bat. Hopeful you have some ideas. By the way, I have set envrionmental variables, but I am not sure what I did is right.
Good luck.
Kenneth