Creating .mdw file and user set-up

[BMcWat]

I created a new .mdw file in order to create users. Created a developer user, allocated to both admins group and user groups and assigned username and password. Then removed admin user from the admins group. Then logged out of Access and expected to be able to login as developer in order to set the admin's password and set up other users.

Instead, upon re-logging into the database, it now prompts for a username I did not set up, and when I enter password it says 'not a valid user account or password'. It is unfortunate that I forgot to backup my original .mdw file,
so cannot restore it. Is there any way of changing the .mdw file back to how it was - without being able to log into Access? Or is the only solution to re-load the Access software?

I now find this username and password prompt comes up when trying to log in all my past .mdb databases, and when opening both .mdw files in Access.

I was surprised that when I removed the Admin user from Admins group, it appears to have changed both my old and new .mdw files and therefore should have had a backup copy as well. My Access VBA book did not point this out. I wonder if maybe the problem is in the software, whether its license has run out, so it could not accept system changes.
Is this a possible cause? I was given the software by a charity 3 years ago, and continued using it since.
Your help on both questions is appreciated.

 

[JBinQLD]

It's nothing to do with license expiry. I've been doing the same as you for last couple of days and have encountered all sorts of strange behaviour. Fortunately I backed up every time.

if you have another machine install access and then copy the "vanilla" system.mdw to your machine and connect to it. Or ask a friend for a copy.

Actually, you can prolly use the user level secuity wizard to make a plain one. Just make a db, any db, and then attempt to secure it and opt to create new .mdw. Leave all the settings as they are except the once that asks whether users should have permissions, choose all for that, and it should recreate the vanilla .mdw for you?

Good luck,

JB

 

[BMcWat]

Thank you very much. I will see if I can get copy of the system.mdw file from the current charity for which I am working, or otherwise from a friend or another machine.

Thank you for your help.

 

[BMcWat]

Thank you again. Thankfully it was still possible to run Access from the start menu as if to create a new project, and create another .mdw file from there. My software then used my new system2.mdb as the default and now all databases work fine.
Interesting that the software, when creating a new .mdw file, automatically used it as a new system default user file to apply to all projects. In future I will make a backup .mdw file before commencing work.