it's possible that the user doesn't have read/write rights on $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin. Me, I always open .ora files with wordpad (write.exe). On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Carmen Rusu <rusucarmen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Please help a poor unix person at lost in the windows world! > -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info