More problems with reports 1

[Maquis]

I really hope someone here can help me. When I try to open a report in Access 97 I get a DDE server error message which says &quot;The instruction at <hex> referenced memory at <hex>. The memory could not be written.&quot; Then the database shuts down.

This just started happening to me yesterday after I downloaded and installed the animated gif dll, gif89a.dll.

I have contacted my company's LAN guys for help and they have completely uninstalled and re-installed my office suite and gotten rid of the gif dll as well, but the error is still happening. The lan guys say that I cannot run Access reports that I created on NT 4.0 on a Windows 2000 box (new computer), but everything was working fine until I downloaded the dll, so I don't think that's it.

Any ideas?? I'm desperate!

 

[JoeMiller]

The LAN guy is FULL of it, as a LAN guy myself who's an avid user of Access and made the switch from NT to 2000. He should be fired for stupidity in my opinion.

As for reinstalling office, that may not have fixed the problem, it was a guess. You may need to rebuild the whole system. Before you do that, try running it on another machine (that doesn't have gif89, and does have the same OS as you) and see if you still get the error. If another similar machine can run it and you can't then reimage the machine. If the other machine CAN'T run it, then you most likely have a corrupt database. Run the compact and repair utility to see if that fixes it, and lastly try to import allthe tables/forms/etc.. into a new fresh db.

HTH Joe Miller
joe.miller@flotech.net

 

[Maquis]

Thanks for the advice, Joe. I know it's not a corrupt database, because it's happening in several of my databases, so I'm assuming it's a corrupt office suite.

As far as system configurations go, I have successfully run the database on other machines (Win95 and 2000), so the problem is definitely with my machine.

You said to re-image my box. Well, maybe now would be a good time to mention that just because I work in IT doesn't mean I know diddly-squat about computers. I am a competent programmer in Access and a Unix based system, but system configurations, drivers, partitions, etc are way over my head. At this point, I'm working on cutting and pasting controls from the affected reports into brand new reports and so far that's working. (Trust me, I'd rather do that than re-image the box!)

Don't be too hard on the LAN guy. We have 2 poor overworked LAN guys who support 500-600 PCs in the building. He knows LAN stuff, but not much about Access programming. In his view, I downloaded an &quot;unauthorized&quot; dll, so it's my problem.

Geez, I download 1 million and 1 &quot;toys&quot; off the web and the first time I download something for a legitimate productive business use, it crashes my computer. Ironic, ain't it.

 

[JoeMiller]

Well you definitely need to rebuild the box, your LAN guy should be the one who does it though shouldn't he? I never ever let my users rebuild their machines. As for being hard on them, eh, I have no sympathy because my users are hard on me!! And I do agree with him in his opinion that you downloaded an unauthorized dll, so I guess I sympathize there! Good luck getting it all straightened out. Joe Miller
joe.miller@flotech.net

 

[Maquis]

LOL, I don't even let my users touch the computers. (Saves a lot of hassle in the long run.)

I think I'll give my lan guy a few days to cool off before I ask him to rebuild the machine. Except for the reports, everything is working fine and I can get around that issue by cut and pasting the reports from scratch using a different machine.

It's just such a weird problem. It's not even all reports that's affected, maybe just 1 report out of 20. (And no, there is no weird VBA code or other stuff in the ringers).

Thanks, again for your advice!