Listers, We have auditing enabled via a third party software and one of the things they are auditing is $OH/dbs/passwordfiles. The password files seem to get updated and it shows up in the audit reports. I am trying to research on what is causing it, but have been unsuccessful. I came across this one, which does not seem to answer the question: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:2318668671089 . I tried creating a test user and locking and unlocking that user, but the password file timestamp did not change in the test case. I tried a user with DBA privs, that did not change it either. Anyone knows what causes the update of the password files when we dont change the passwords. Version is 10.2. Ram.