I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that what Lois is talking about is how to startup a DB without a *person* to babysit it and tell the DB which parameters it should start with. I know how to fix this in 8.0.x, but not in 8i yet (new to that scene). I would imagine it's at least similar.
You should be able to stop and start the instance in question and should be working *at* the actual machine.
1) In 8.0.x, open Instance Manager. Tell Oracle which pfile to open with, if neccessary.
2) Click on "Initialization Parameters." In the right frame, you should see all the initialization parameters you specified in the pfile. At the bottom, there is a "Save" button. Click it.
3) A new window will pop up where you will need to name your initialization parameters. I generally follow the sid_mmddyyyy rule, in case you have several sids running on one machine. Make any notes you need, so you can remember why this is the set of initialization parameters you're running instead of another set. Click OK.
NOTE: At this point, you should be certain you can bounce the DB for a few moments. You will be down for less than 30 seconds.
4) In the left frame, open the "Stored Configurations" tree. Click on the name you just saved the initialization parameters as.
5) In the right frame, the initialization parameters are set. Click "Apply."
From this point on, a *person* will no longer need to specify the pfile. The initialization parameters will be loaded from the Stored Configurations you specified.
Hope it helps,
~Jayme T Hunt
DB Analyst/Programmer