Is it a parallel server setup? If not I the suggestion at this point would be that if it was not a production server and you can afford to bounce it, then bounce the server. There seems to be some kind of problem in getting the lock on the control file.


Before bouncing your server, lets try this.

shutdown your instance

shutdown immediate/abort

do a ps -ef|grep instance_name and see if there are any unkilled processes. If you see any, kill them. Now try to start the instance, at nomount --> then mount --> then recover --> and then open.


Let me know whether this helps. In the past I have noticed that there had been some kind of wierd problem people had been experiencing with the startup of 8.1.7 instances. The last resolution of bouncing thier server was the fix for thier problems. If you have oracle support, pound at their doors and ask why the heck it is happening.

Sam