What error do you get when you try to offline them? You might want to try: ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE 'filename' OFFLINE DROP; ^^^^ Regards, Brandon -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 3:54 PM To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: PLEASE How to startup a database when you don't have some readwrite datafiles Hi, please does any one knows how in Oracle 9.2 How can I startup a database when the read write datafiles were dropped and can't be recovered. Some one forgot to leave them read only. In that datafiles there were not information, only empty tables. Finally this is not important. There is only a full cold backup without that datafiles. I can't simply connect and put them offline. CONN SYS/SAFI70613474@xxxxxxxxxx AS SYSDBA SHUTDOWN; STARTUP PFILE=E:\oraSAFI\init\initSAFI.ora MOUNT; ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE 'E:\OraSAFIReadOnly\DFL_a_SAFI' OFFLINE; ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE 'D:\ORASAFIREADONLY\DFL_b_IDX_SAFI' OFFLINE; ALTER DATABASE OPEN; And set READ_ONLY_OPEN_DELAYED = TRUE What I'm missing, please. Thank you -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message or attachments hereto. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l