Oracle XE stopped working. TNS listener refused connection

On Windows 7 64 bit, Orcale XE 11 my OracleXXETNSListener service was not running and did terminate immediately when I tried to start it.

1. Adding

(SID_DESC = (SID_NAME = XE) (ORACLE_HOME = C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server) )

to my

C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\network\ADMIN\listener.ora

2. changing the hostname to localhost

3. restarting the OracleServiceXE service under System - Services solved the issue.

So the complete listener.ora section looks like:

SID_LIST_LISTENER =
  (SID_LIST =
    (SID_DESC =
      (SID_NAME = PLSExtProc)
      (ORACLE_HOME = C:\servers\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server)
      (PROGRAM = extproc)
    )
    (SID_DESC =
      (SID_NAME = CLRExtProc)
      (ORACLE_HOME = C:\servers\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server)
      (PROGRAM = extproc)
    )
    (SID_DESC =
      (SID_NAME = XE)
      (ORACLE_HOME = C:\servers\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server)
    )
  )

LISTENER =
  (DESCRIPTION_LIST =
    (DESCRIPTION =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = IPC)(KEY = EXTPROC1))
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = localhost)(PORT = 1521))
    )
  )

DEFAULT_SERVICE_LISTENER = (XE)

Update: Now it is 5 years later and I had the same issue with OracleXE 18c on Win10. The TNS listener would not start right after successful installation because oracleXE\dbhomeXE\NETWORK\ADMIN\listener.ora was pointing to localhost.docker.internal instead of localhost.

I had a similar problem, and I fixed it by removing the "IPC" lines from both listener.ora and tnsnames.ora.

On listener.ora, I removed:

(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = IPC)(KEY = EXTPROC1))

On tnsnames.ora, I removed:

EXTPROC_CONNECTION_DATA =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = IPC)(KEY = EXTPROC1))
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SID = PLSExtProc)
      (PRESENTATION = RO)
    )
  )

It may have been a overkill, but it's finally fixed, after several hours!

I had the exact same problem and after spending almost 4 hours trying to find and answer, finally adding

(SID_DESC =
  (SID_NAME = XE)
  (ORACLE_HOME = C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server)
)

to my listener.ora and restarting both XE services solved the issue. I am using 11.2.0 (XE) on windows 7 x64 with out any hitch till yesterday. A reboot of my PC this morning caused the listener to not find the SID.

Now I am backing up both listener.ora and tnsnames.ora.

btw, forgot to mention I changed the hostname in both the files from bob.mycompany.com to localhost.