sudden glitchiness occurs on certain PCs inside Access

[JumpinJimRivers]

Hello everybody,

We're all of the sudden encountering some strange phenomenon with Access. It has only happened on two PCs now but we're concerned it may start happening more frequently.

Here's what these 2 infected PCs do:

1. A particular continous subform all of the sudden will not display at all.

2. A particular listbox will not show any of the numerical values that it supposed to.

3. A particular textbox shows #error instead of the numerical value.

I first thought the problem might be a broken /missing references, but I checked/matched them with other PCs with identical OS systems and Office versions, and they looked ok.

Does anybody know or have an idea why it's doing this? Is it a Windows glitch? We are wondering if it is a windows glitch because one thing that does fix it (at least temporarily) is reinstalling the Windows OS and Office. But it doesn't seem like we should have to do this every time.

I'd appreciate any help.

 

[psemianonymous]

You might have a corrupt MDB file. There are tens (yes, TENS) of possible causes and fixes. Thus a very wise man has written a detailed FAQ on the subject. See the link below.

For your case, I'd recommend you create a new database. In this new database, attempt to import all the objects from your funny-acting database. If this fails, you now know that your database is definitely corrupted. See the FAQ for (far more) detailed instructions.

 

[psemianonymous]

You might have a corrupt MDB file. There are tens (yes, TENS) of possible causes and fixes. Thus a very wise man has written a detailed FAQ on the subject. See the link below.

For your case, I'd recommend you create a new database. In this new database, attempt to import all the objects from your funny-acting database. If this fails, you now know that your database is definitely corrupted. See the FAQ for (far more) detailed instructions.

--
Find common answers using Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.databases.ms-access

Corrupt MDBs FAQ

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

 

[JumpinJimRivers]

hmm, ok, I don't like the sound of that. Do you mean the front-end mdb file might be corrupt, or the back-end?

If it is corrupt how can I limit this from happening all the time? Would making it a MDE file help any?

Now a bunch of questions are hitting me. I wonder exactly how stable Access is as a back-end. Are they proned to eventually corrupt in a multi-user environment? Would it be wise to migrate to SQL Server backend??

 

[psemianonymous]

My (limited) experience with multi-user apps and MDB backends has involved very few instances of corruption, and always fixable. In every case, one memo field had gone bad in one line of a table. Deleting that item (and yes, re-entering it w/o the memo field) fixed the problem.

Q&A time:

Front-end might be corrupt, but I'd bet it's the backend data that's corrupt.

Keep it from happening: limit use of Autonumbers in tables where multiple simultaneous entry occurs, as well as a hundred other things with marginal benefits, like splitting the database, and other things I can't remember. It's all right for this sort of thing to happen occasionally, that is, for me it's okay. For your situation, it may not be okay. The best protection against this is daily backups, so that *AT MOST* a day's work is lost.

MDE helping: It won't, I don't think. It would be a marginal benefit, if any.

Eventual corruption: yes. With a reasonably good table structure and database design, you should not expect weekly corruption (not monthly, either). But you should expect it eventually. Is this acceptable to you? No? Switch to SQL Server or some other server-based DBMS.



It's remarkably easy to fix Access DB corruption, once you know how. Try the import trick to confirm if your database is corrupt anyway, which you never confirmed.