Hi Deepak, Another thing to check: what other pfile/spfiles exists on this box? I forget the order of precedence now, but *your* sp/p file could be ignored because of another one further up the order. Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: DBA Deepak To: NEW pop.tiscali.de ; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 12:32 PM Subject: Re: PFILE from SPFILE The control_file entry in the pfile created from spfile looks like ?\oradata\MYDB\control01.ctl On 10/17/05, NEW pop.tiscali.de <adolph.tony@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Hi Deepak, RE 1: as a previous post just noted, in RAC configurations, the * is replaced by the instance number for the database. RE 2: the ? is ORACLE_HOME, not BASE RE 3: looks dodgy to me, what's the control_files entry in the new pfile that was just created from the spfile? Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: DBA Deepak To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 12:12 PM Subject: PFILE from SPFILE Hi All, When I created a pfile from spfile the pfile has lines like the following.... *.background_dump_dest='?\admin\ I have a few doubts regarding that. 1> Why *. is there before each line. 2> Why the locations of the dumps as well as the control files have ?\ prefixed. 3> Even when i use sho parameter control_file it shows the ? Please help me in understanding the above. -- Regards, Deepak Oracle DBA -- Regards, Deepak Oracle DBA