If a shutdown immediate hangs then what I do is usually just open another sqlplus /nolog session, connect / as sysdba, and issue "shutdown abort". Works like a charm. To prevent shutdown immediate from hanging and since we run the databases on backend servers and the applications from an application server we follow a simple procedure: stop production batch run a script to kill all remotely connect users connect to Oracle and shutdown immediate We have not had a shutdown hang in ages. HTH -- Mark D Powell -- -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dougie McGibbon Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 6:52 PM To: 'Oracle-L@Freelists' Subject: Re: hanging shutdowns "What should I do if "shutdown immediate" hangs? Last time, I had to reboot the Solaris Server." ps -ef | grep smon kill -9 ... Kill off smon and the rest of the oracle processes follow. Dougie McGibbon -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l