hi pando,

thanks a lot. i guess i will manage from here onwards. actually my co. wants me to be the dba so i gues i woill have to start studying very hard. :D . i did learn a lot as this is the first time my comapny has encountered a serious database problem. earlier, they simply used to reinstall oracle and import the dump. but i guess i will have to put systems in place. for the time being my database working properly(hopefully). i will just have to import a few tables and process them.can u just tell me how to delete that datafile. right now it is offline. thanks once again. bye and have a nice time.

satishpc