i screwed up a thermostat install

Clearly, you should have noted the color and letter terminal the wires were attached to on the old stat. You haven't mentioned what the thermostat is controlling, however at this point, you'll probably have to determine what each wire is attached to on the other end

it is attached to a forced hot air oil furnace and a central a/c unit. how do i determine where each wire is attached?

On the old thermostat is there a jumper between terminals RC and RW?

I'm sorry, I meant between RC and RH

no there isn't a jumper. the old thermostat has five wires.

RH, G, Y, W, RC

the color of the wires are red, green, yellow, white & orange.

If there wasn't a jumper between RC and RH, you have a two transformer system. Two wires will operate the heat and three will operate the cool. The connections for heat are RH and W. If you touch the red and white wires together, see if the furnace fires up. If so, connect those two wires to the new stat rh and w. The green wire should go to the G terminal for the cooling fan and the yellow should go to Y for the a/c condenser, and hopefully the orange wire is the RC for the cooling. After connecting the two heat wires, just touch the orange to the green wire and see if the blower comes on. If so, I think were good

So the ARE color coded? You could hope whoever did the installation followed conventions.

I've used this to advantage in the past:

i wired it as you suggested. the blower is running and will not shut off. the new thermostat came out of the box with a jumper on the RH & RC terminals. i removed that jumper. should i have done so?

the thermostat says my home is at 69 degrees. i set the target temp at

yes. when i touched the red & white wires together, the furnace kicked on.

Anything is possible. The blower could be on from the furnace (heat) or there should be a "fan" switch which could be turned on

yes the blower turned on. the fan switch is on auto. the temp dropped to 67 and the furnace is on. i guess i'll wait and see if it turns off.

On the furnace, once it heats up and starts the fan, the fan runs independently of the thermostat and will continue until the thermostat is satisfied and the furnace cools down

ok. what if the blower does not turn off?

take the green wire off of G and see if it stops

will do. thank you very much for all your help.