Thank you gentlemen,
We are in the middle of a major change of several items so switching to direct connect or an upgrade of ArcSDE were not in the cards but it's looking like we'll have to one or the other.
May I ask, what are the locators for? My application developer doesn't have any idea (I am the dba) what they are and he's able to start up the ArcCatalog and things seem to be working fine. Kind of at a loss,
Appreciate your time,
elizabeth