Thanks Han. Unfortunately that did not work. I set all targets to the exact value that they currently occupy, i.e.: shared pool = 1280M large pool = 128M streams pool = 128M java pool = 256M pga_aggregate_target = 2496M sga_target = 4672M db_cache_size = 2752M Setting memory_target to 16G and even to 20G ( i.e. memory_max_target) still gives the same error "ORA-00846: could not shrink MEMORY_TARGET to specified value" :( Cheers, Tony On 16/01/13 11:16 AM, Xie, Han wrote: > Hi Tony, > > Oracle normally gives all new memory to default buffer cache, then > dynamically adjust other components later. > > What is your shared_pool_size parameter value please? Is it possible that > shared_pool has grown, now oracle wants/needs to shrink it back to its > parameter size first before add new memory? > > My 2 cents. > > Cheers, > Han > <snip due to overquoting> -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l