Corruption - how to MAKE it happen?

[Doug]

I am in a friendly debate with some co-workers... and my boss.

We use Access 2003 for the frontend (on workstations) as well as for
the backend (on a Dell PowerEdge running Windows 2000 server, SP4).
We have approx. 20 users *logged in* at any one time (over 300
userid's exist), but we have never run metrics to see how many on
average are accessing the database concurrently.

About once every few weeks, the database mysteriously becomes
corrupted.

One thing that seems pretty reliable is if my co-worker or I are in
design mode of a table and manually edit a record while someone else
is editing the same record via the frontend.

In addition, I thought that if I abnormally exited the program (CTRL-
ALT-DEL and kill the process while the program is loading, etc.), that
there would be a very good chance of corrupting the DB. Especially
(only?) if you killed it while it was accessing a record, before it
closed a recordset, etc.

Can anyone shed any light here? I have found several references
throughout this newsgroup, and even a Corruption FAQ:

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

but I would really like to know if abnormal termination would/should
do it. Random testing so far has been unable to reproduce the desired
corruption. I even tried running the code, setting a breakpoint in
the middle of a record operation, then CTRL-ALT-DELing the process.
No corruption.

Help?

Thanks.

[David W. Fenton]

"Tony Toews [MVP]" <tt****@teluspl anet.netwrote in
news:h7******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

"David W. Fenton" <XX*******@dfen ton.com.invalid wrote:

>>Doug, this looks like a fairly reliable way to corrupt an Access
database:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=935370

Requires a couple of Windows Vista or Longhorn Server machines.

The key issue there seems to be SMB 2.0. Isn't there some way in
Vista to turn that off? I vaguely recall some report of a problem
with that in Access before. Anyone?

Yes, SMB 1.0 was a problem in the past although it only affected
performance. See the Disable Server Message Block (SMB) Signing
section at http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

Er, SMB is the name for the entire Windows networking subsystem.
When you're using NETBIOS, it's SMB networking. The "Signing" issue
is a feature of SMB, not the whole thing.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

"David W. Fenton" <XX*******@dfen ton.com.invalid wrote:

>>>The key issue there seems to be SMB 2.0. Isn't there some way in
Vista to turn that off? I vaguely recall some report of a problem
with that in Access before. Anyone?

Yes, SMB 1.0 was a problem in the past although it only affected
performance. See the Disable Server Message Block (SMB) Signing
section at http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

Er, SMB is the name for the entire Windows networking subsystem.
When you're using NETBIOS, it's SMB networking. The "Signing" issue
is a feature of SMB, not the whole thing.

Ah, I got confused. Thanks for the clarification.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[David W. Fenton]

"Tony Toews [MVP]" <tt****@teluspl anet.netwrote in
news:8p******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

"David W. Fenton" <XX*******@dfen ton.com.invalid wrote:

>>>>The key issue there seems to be SMB 2.0. Isn't there some way in
Vista to turn that off? I vaguely recall some report of a
problem with that in Access before. Anyone?

Yes, SMB 1.0 was a problem in the past although it only affected
performance . See the Disable Server Message Block (SMB) Signing
section at http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

Er, SMB is the name for the entire Windows networking subsystem.
When you're using NETBIOS, it's SMB networking. The "Signing"
issue is a feature of SMB, not the whole thing.

Ah, I got confused. Thanks for the clarification.

It is, of course, why SAMBA is called SaMBa.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/