[AccessD] [Access D] Corruption of Database and Other Weird Symptoms

Jim Lawrence (AccessD) accessd at shaw.ca
Tue Apr 22 23:27:48 CDT 2003


Hi Tina:

There are possible a number of problems that caused and are resulting from
certain issues. I have a small network in my home office and one of the
computers is Win98SE. It was always having problems providing a stable
connecting to the other computers on the network, Win2000 and XP. The final
solution was supplement the TCP/IP protocol with Netbuei. I have never had
any issues since then and have used this method to stabilize some clients
LANs.

Another possible problem area is the mixing of 10Megabit and 100Megabit NIC
cards. They are supposed to work together with the proper hub but...

HTH
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Tina Norris
Fields
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 3:04 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] [Access D] Corruption of Database and Other Weird
Symptoms



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

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