Oracle hangs on startup (9.2 on Win2000)

We're getting a very strange problem with very few symptoms to work = from.

It's our policy to take cold backups of our Oracle 9.2 database, which = runs on a Win2000 server. Consequently, the Veritas backup job first = shuts down Agent, Listener and database, then the backup runs, then the = job restarts the database, Listener and Agent.

All the above has worked perfectly well for several months. Until last = night... when someone tried to connect to the database, it was apparent = that the database was still down. I looked in the event log and found = the following:

• - - - - Dump file d:\orant\admin\dlib\bdump\alert_dlib.log Tue Nov 02 10:44:42 2004 ORACLE V9.2.0.2.1 - Production vsnsta=3D0 vsnsql=3D12 vsnxtr=3D3 Windows 2000 Version 5.0 Service Pack 4, CPU type 586 Tue Nov 02 10:44:42 2004 Starting ORACLE instance (normal)
• - - - -

These were the last lines in the event log. It looks as though the = startup of Oracle simply "hung". No error messages, no trace files = generated. Nothing, just hanging there.

We tried stopping and restarting the database service, with exactly the = same result (the above is pasted from this later attempt, in fact). We = tried rebooting the server. Same result. The listener log indicates no = problems. But every attempt to startup the database gives the above = result.

Any ideas, please?

Paul Vincent
(Desperate) DBA
University of Central England

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l