Newbie has RMAN restore questions

Question

I am new to Oracle and RMAN. We had a failure on a Windows Server running Oracle 9.2. I copied the backed up datafiles from RMAN to a recovery system. The production system is running again. I need to restore the old data on the recovery system, which is a clean installation of Windows Server and Oracle 9.2.
How do I get RMAN to see the backup set files that I copied over from our production system?
I tried this using the name of one of the backed up files:
CATALOG DATFILECOPY 'C:\BACKUP\ZEUS\DF0_ZEUS-2965_715266526';This returned "ORA-19563: datafile copy header validation failed for file C:\BACKUP\ZEUS\DF0_ZEUS-2965_715266526."
I think the problem is the one described at http://youngcow.net/doc/oracle10g/backup.102/b14192/maint007.htm:
If you try to catalog a datafile copy from a database other than the connected target database,
then RMAN issues an error such as the following:
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: failure of catalog command on default channel at 08/29/2001 14:44:34
ORA-19563: datafile copy header validation failed for file /tmp/tools01.dbfI tried SET DBID so that the DBID is the same as the production database, but my results are unchanged.
Edited by: user12961563 on Apr 15, 2010 10:27 AM

Answer 1

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have tried "RESTORE CONTROLFILE FROM AUTOBACKUP;" and the procedure "Performing Disaster Recovery" documented here: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/docs/oracle/10g/server.101/b10734/rcmrecov.htm. I run into these problems:
Not mounted: The RESTORE command fails with ORA-01507: Database not mounted.
Mounted: RMAN-06189: Current DBID does not match target mounted database.
So I run "SET DBID" to make the DBID the same as the source database, just like it says in step 3 of "Performing Disaster Recovery". The RESTORE command then searches some files and gives RMAN-06172: No autobackup found or specified handle is not a valide copy or piece.
The backed up files are in F:\Backup, and I have these settings:
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP ON;
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 'F:\BACKUP\cf_%F';
The only thing I can think of is that RMAN is not looking in F:\BACKUP. Is there something else going on? I've read through scores of pages of docs, but can't find and leads.