thanks Yavor!!! that was the problem... im trying to slam it in and move on, and failed to review the entire init.ora for the proper path. On 10/19/05, Yavor Ivanov <Yavor_Ivanov@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Do you have the directory structure needed for *_dump_dest? > If the directory for background_dump_dest does not exist starting the > database takes ages... I've made that mistake with test restores (-: > > Rgds, > Yavor > > > -- Bryan Wells bunjibry@xxxxxxxxx Database Administrator