All it means, that there is some other service running, that depends on oracle service. The simplest way to find it is to go to ControlPanel/Service, and try to stop OracleService<SID>. It will show the dialog box with the name of "dependnet" service and ask for your confirmation to stop that service (as well as OracleService<SID>>). If you proceed, it'll stop both services. In the future, if you want to use oradim to stop oracle service, you will have first to stop dependent serice, using: Net stop <dependent_service_name> and only then use oradim to stop oracle service. Igor Neyman, OCP DBA ineyman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Burton, Laura Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 4:24 PM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: ORA-00018 Receiving the following error when using oradim to shutdown a database: DIM-00018: Failed to stop Oracle Service O/S-Error: (OS 1051> A stop control has been sent to a service which other running services are dependent on. This is Oracle 9.2 database on NT4.0. I've reviewed postings on Metalink but no answers were found. Anyone have an idea of something to try? I have stopped the services through the control panel and stopped the application which references the database. I don't find anything in the alert log. There is a trace log but that is like reading brail when you've never had too. Thanks,=20 Laura -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l