Hello

Thanks everybody for ur reply!!! I connected to oracle 8i through the following steps:(from command prompt)-

sqlplus>connect sys/change_on_install as sysdba

it displayed:-

idle instance started

then i wrote:-

startup

and through this , instance got started and i was able to work in sql*plus editor...........but i want to ask whether i have to do this every time i want to connect to Oracle??? Is not there a way out by which instance gets automatically started...do i need to make any change in registry???
actually when i tried to connect to Oracle(via 'scott/tiger' combination) after turning my PC on....it displayed me the following error:-

ORA-01034:ORACLE not available

that's when i tried to connect to Oracle thru command prompt via "sys/change_on_install" combination in sysdba mode(as described above in this post) and it was successful attempt.

so please tell me how will this instance get started automatically???
thanx once again

Nitin