I don't have the first email of this thread, but it sounds like you want to restore a datafile or a tablespace on Windows. Also, it does not mention which version of the database is being used. I assume the datafile is still in place, because of the locking error. That being said, I tried a tablespace recover on XP using Oracle 10gR2, here are the commands and the result was successful as seen here: RMAN> sql "alter tablespace test offline"; sql statement: alter tablespace test offline RMAN> restore tablespace 'TEST'; Starting restore at 06-MAY-07 using channel ORA_DISK_1 channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile backupset restore channel ORA_DISK_1: specifying datafile(s) to restore from backup set restoring datafile 00006 to D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ROB10GR2\TEST.DBF channel ORA_DISK_1: reading from backup piece C:\ORACLE\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\ROB10GR2\BACKUPSET\2007_ 05_06\O1_MF_NNNDF_TAG20070506T191404_33WZBYMJ_.BKP channel ORA_DISK_1: restored backup piece 1 piece handle=C:\ORACLE\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\ROB10GR2\BACKUPSE T\2007_05_06\O1_MF_NNNDF_TAG20070506T191404_33WZBYMJ_.BKP tag=TAG20070506T191404 channel ORA_DISK_1: restore complete, elapsed time: 00:00:36 Finished restore at 06-MAY-07 RMAN> recover tablespace 'TEST'; Starting recover at 06-MAY-07 using channel ORA_DISK_1 starting media recovery media recovery complete, elapsed time: 00:00:11 Finished recover at 06-MAY-07 RMAN> sql 'alter tablespace test online'; sql statement: alter tablespace test online RMAN> Robert G. Freeman Oracle Consultant/DBA/Author Principal Engineer/Team Manager The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Father of Five, Husband of One, Author of various geeky computer titles from Osborne/McGraw Hill (Oracle Press) Sig V1.1 -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jared Still Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 3:11 PM To: wbfergus@xxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Restore problem On 5/4/07, Bill Ferguson <wbfergus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: Hi all, channel ORA_DISK_1: restored backup piece 14 piece handle=E:\BACKUP\BACKED UP DATA\AJIGLMEM_14_1.BAK tag=TAG20070501T220157 channel ORA_DISK_1: reading from backup piece E:\BACKUP\BACKED UP DATA\AJIGLMEM_15_1.BAK ORA-19870: error reading backup piece E:\BACKUP\BACKED UP DATA\AJIGLMEM_15_1.BAK ORA-19504: failed to create file "E:\ORACLE\DATAFILES\NGDB_DATA_06.DBF" ORA-27086: unable to lock file - already in use OSD-00002: additional error information O/S-Error: (OS 32) The process cannot access the file because it is being used b y another process. failover to previous backup Hi Bill, Taking a tablespace offline on windows does not seem to remove the lock that Oracle has on it. When a file is open, the process has a lock (don't know the windows technical term for the type of lock) Just tested this on my laptop: took 10g tablespace EXAMPLE offline, and the handle utility (from Sys Internals toolkit) shows that the EXAMPLE files are still open by Oracle: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- oracle.exe pid: 2848 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM c: File C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 d8: Section \BaseNamedObjects\*oraspawn_buffer_ts50* f4: Section \BaseNamedObjects\ShimSharedMemory ... 624: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\USERS01.DBF 628: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\EXAMPLE01.DBF 62c: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\EXAMPLE01.DBF ... 664: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\SYSTEM01.DBF 668: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\SYSTEM01.DBF 66c: File C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\oradata\ts50\UNDOTBS01.DBF ... I've never restored a tablespace on Windows, but it appears that your procedure may need to be modified a bit. Have you tried restoring the tablespace with Oracle in mount mode? Our resident RMAN expert (Robert Freeman) may know the answer to this. -- Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist