Well, *that* was certainly an ego-deflating experience . It seems I can't spell query_rewrite_enabled - Doh!

But my ineptitude aside, I kinda think that not starting the entire database because of a simple typo was a little harsh - couldn't it have just as easily skipped that param and fed me a nice warning - maybe even in the event viewer, where warnings are *supposed* to go in Windows? So, buried in one of the multiple little log files Oracle seems to keep around is a little error simply stating: "failure in processing system parameters". IMHO, there should be a massive header in front of this error saying: BECAUSE OF THE FOLLOWING ERROR, YOUR ENTIRE DATABASE WAS TOSSED:, with lots of asterisks to bring attention to it. *Something* more than what was done would have been appropriate. Or again, is it simply that I was raised on SQLServer, which, if nothing else, excels at user-friendliness?

Rant over.

Thanks for the help Jurij,

- Chris