I do not pretend to have an answer for your SYSSTART question. But I have a new direction to point you in entirely. I suggest that you do not want anyone signing on to the SYS account at all. No matter how careful a SYS account user is, SYS account users will create files and generally have the potential to mess up your system. It also makes it nearly impossible to separate the HP delivered files from the ones accidentally left behind by people siging on to the SYS account. I suggest that the user OPERATOR.SYS has no password. Additionally the SYS account has no password. You heard me right. Anyone can sign on as OPERATOR.SYS. The trick is to immediately log them off again. Instead consider the following logon UDC... :print udc.operator.sys SETUP OPTION LIST LOGON NOBREAK SETVAR HPAUTOCONT TRUE LIMIT 0,0 DOWN 6 OPENQ 6 SPOOLER LP;START STREAMS 10 JOBFENCE 0 JOBPRI CS JOBSECURITY LOW ALLOW @.@;COMMANDS=LOG,STARTSPOOL OUTFENCE 7 STREAM JFIXMSG.JOB.A544 echo Streaming job to STARTSESS (OPER.MyAcct) on LDev 20. STREAM JOPER.JOB.MyAcct BYE *** Most of the commands executed are ignored if not entered at the console. The remainder of the commands are harmless. Even restreaming the job to do a STARTSESS command to LDev 20 can be redone To go further, the next step (secret) is to have the OPER.MyAcct LOGON UDC attempts to ALLOCATE EDITOR.PUB.SYS. If it is successful, we are doing an initial system startup and the UDC will run the rest of the system start up commands. Simple, elegant and easy to maintain. Mark Ranft - HP e3000 Internet Consultant Pro 3K www.Pro3K.com [log in to unmask]