I created a local user on the machine and had my bat job run by that user and it ran OK so I was able to maintain the sqlnet.ora parameter authentication_services NTS. So all is well with the world ... so far ... until the next problem! Thank you, Jared for your suggestions. Orysia -----Original Message----- From: Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Jared.Still@xxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 11:37 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: windows 2000 question > Your batch job needs to run as a user that has membership in the DBA_GRP, as > well as having logon privileges. That should be 'ORA_DBA', not 'DBA_GRP'. Jared