Tina Norris Fields
tinanfields at torchlake.com
Tue Apr 22 17:03:32 CDT 2003
Hi - Has anyone else experienced something like this? Setup is a small TCP IP network - 1 PC running WIN98 and Office 2000 - 2 PCs running WINXP and Office XP Database was created in A2K, and resides in a shared folder on one of the 2 PCs running WINXP and Office XP - (not split into BE and FE) Shared folder mapped as drive G: as seen by the other 2 PCs. Database is a membership records sort of thing - households, the people in the households, memberships attributed to the individual or family - volunteers, season ticket holders - that sort of very ordinary information. It was working, apparently perfectly, on Tuesday, April 15 - accessed by users on all 3 PCs at one time or another. On Thursday, the office secretary could not open the database - she got the error message that the database was of an unrecognized format. Several attempts were made from the secretary's computer (WIN98) and from the executive director's computer (WINXP) - always the error was unrecognized format, sometimes included the error number 3343. The Repair Utility was tried - unrecognized format. Next effort was to make a new blank database and import the objects from the old one. HA! Access crashed just trying to create a blank database! Whenever Access tried and failed to open the database (2K and XP), the network also partially failed, making the secretary's computer invisible to the executive director's computer. The network man found that there were way too many temporary internet files on the secretary's computer, cleaned them out, and reset the default for IE to take out the trash when it closed. Then he reestablished the network connections and tried to do anything about opening or copying or repairing the database - crash!!! And lost connection, or at least apparently lost connection. His theory was that there had been sufficient temporary internet files to cripple WIN98 memory (and swap file), which may, indeed have corrupted either the Access program itself, or the database during the last time it was successfully used. We plan a full reinstall of Access (both versions) on the respective computers - and they are going to finally get a matching computer for the secretary, so that all the computers will be using the same version of operating system and the Office Suite. And, no, of course they didn't keep up with the necessary backup, and my copy of the database is two months old, so we will need to re-key a bunch of data. But, the network guy is stumped so far, and so am I. Granted, my narrative is incomplete and reveals just how frazzled my brain is - still, has anybody else seen anything like this? Did the different versions of Access start a war with each other and chew up that database? Thanks for any suggestions, or even just a sympathetic nod . . . Tina