Because each dedicated connection (thread) has a reserved stack size of 1M, the actual virtual memory reserved by Oracle is larger than the memory you are probably watching. Check the virtual memory for the oracle process in task manager (in the Processes tab, select the "Virtual Memory" column from the View), or use PerfMon and select the process object for oracle, selecting virtual memory. You may see it near 3GB, causing new memory allocations to fail. (Also, make sure that you do have a 2GB page file.) If you have quite a few connections, using orastack will often allow you more connections (in addition to adjusting pga_aggregate_target or sort/hash area sizes). Using indirect data buffers, as suggested, is also a possibility, but don't forget that you have to reserve an Window size (the default is 1GB), so you really don't get all that lower memory for PGA (shared pool and log will also be in the lower memory). Regards, Carol Spencer --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------