Hi Mike,

Normally in authomatic start of Oracle Database it search the init.ora in $ORACLE_HOME/database, then you must create a text file with the same name that init_old.ora from older version and write in this init.ora

ifile=$ORACLE_HOME/database/init_old.ora

where $ORACLE_HOME is the path of your old software. And only write this in this init.ora

I think now is better explained.

Angel