I am assuming that this is a Oracle Financials instance. Because a standard 11.5.8 or later instance has 382 tablespaces. If this is correct, then you may want to consider using "Tablespace Migration Utility" for Oracle Financials. This will take the number of tablespaces down to 12. Oracle's view on tablespaces has definently changed to where they like less instead of more. I know I have not answered your question. Just wanted to give you something to think about. I am sure someone else can give you a better detail explanation of why checkpointing takes so long when you have large number of files. Also how to tell what is happening during startup. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l