Hi Mark, I did this dozens of times, You are missing something try recreating the service. stop service and oradim -DELETE -sid %1 oradim -new -sid %1 -intpwd %170613474 -startmode auto -pfile E:\ora%1\init\init%1.ora -maxusers 5 Maybe you are missing some parameter, I don't know. Now if you don't solve your situation then sqlplus /nolog conn sys/ as sysdba startup pfile=path open recover and there you should see the problem -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l