9.2 - Parallel Query Not Working

On a 9.2.0.6 database on Solarix 64, which is created every day from a magical SAN-based mirror process thing (excuse the tech talk), we alter a particular table to a default degree of parallelsim of 12. A process which performs a full scan of that table picks up the degree of 12 and completes in a couple of hours.    

  Later in the day we can no longer prompt the instance to give any parallelism.    

  I've tried everything obvious ... setting parallel_adaptive_multiuser to false, parallel max servers to 48, used hints, made sure the table's default dop is 12, checked that PROCESSES is reasonably high (500+), that the server is not very busy (less than 10 active sessions), ALTER SESSION FORCE PARALLEL QUERY, but nothing we do will prompt PQ to be used on even the most simple SELECT * FROM ... queries.    

  Any thoughts on this are much appreciated.

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