In mid-January we did upgrade to 10.2.0.3 and applied the patch to the aforementioned bug. It has now been one full billing cycle and we haven't had a re-occurrence of the instance hanging problem. The bind_peeked_pq_mismatch query now returns no rows. select sql_id, count(*) from v$sql_shared_cursor where bind_peeked_pq_mismatch='Y' group by sql_id; no rows selected FYI. Hope your day is warmer than mine. Don. -- Don Seiler http://seilerwerks.wordpress.com ultimate: http://www.mufc.us -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l