Chris,

What puzzles me is the fact that you weren't able to find the alert file. My initial definition of its name was wrong - it is not alertSID.log, it is SIDalrt.log. Every database must have an alert file, it creates it automaticaly to record any special events happening to the database. Even if you delete or rename it, your RDBMS will create a new one as soon as any of those special events happens.

You *should* have this file. Loook for it in your BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST directory

SELECT value FROM v$parameter WHERE UPPER(name) = 'BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST';

AFAIK the name pattern for the alert file is standard (SIDalrt.log), you can't specify other name for this file with any of the init parameters.