Yes I checked the file permissions... In fact I logged in as the user specified in the service and started postgres via the command line with postgres -D ../data and the postgres.conf parameters were loaded as confirmed with a "show all" in psql And still running postgresql from the service does not load the parameters from the postgres.conf file. So it does not seem like a permissions issue. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/