Hi Mark, That's because you had overiden the default autobackup format in the persistent configuration ('cf_%F'). And now RMAN is asking the media manager to restore the spfile from pieces with the default format '%F' and none can be found. AFAIK you can't specify an alternate autobackup format upon restore (the instance is not mounted, you can not create a persistent configuration, at least with 9i). So in your case you may have to 'manually' specify the autobackup to restore by using "FROM 'media_handle'". If you find a better solution please let us know. Regards, Jerome -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l