Corrupted Front end

[Bob Hynes]

Hi All,
Does anyone know of a place where a corrupted mdb(front-end) can be
sent and have that place be able to tell me what got corrupted within
the db?
Here's the issue;
All pc's are WindowsNT on a Novell network using Office97 Pro. I built
a db application(work distribution and log app) which has been running
in this environment for more than a year, its a front-end/back-end
setup using UNC for its pathing, both ends get compacted once a
week(with Visual Agent from FMS) and it has had no problems until
about two months ago when one of the users contacted me and told me
they got an error message which said 'unrecognized format' when they
clicked on their desktop shortcut which points to the front-end mdb.
After not being able to open the front-end nor being able to fix it
with Jetcomp.exe I restored it from the latest backup. This error has
now happened three more times and I can not figure it out. I think its
a user doing something but do not know what but maybe if I knew what
form or what linked table or what report. So, I'm looking for a place
where a can send my un-open-able, corrupted front-end and hopefully
find out what got corrupted.
thanks
bobh.

[Yamafopa]

"Bob Hynes" <vu******@usexpress.net> wrote in message
news:39**************************@posting.google.c om...

Hi All,
Does anyone know of a place where a corrupted mdb(front-end) can be
sent and have that place be able to tell me what got corrupted within
the db?
Here's the issue;
All pc's are WindowsNT on a Novell network using Office97 Pro. I built
a db application(work distribution and log app) which has been running
in this environment for more than a year, its a front-end/back-end
setup using UNC for its pathing, both ends get compacted once a
week(with Visual Agent from FMS) and it has had no problems until
about two months ago when one of the users contacted me and told me
they got an error message which said 'unrecognized format' when they
clicked on their desktop shortcut which points to the front-end mdb.
After not being able to open the front-end nor being able to fix it
with Jetcomp.exe I restored it from the latest backup. This error has
now happened three more times and I can not figure it out. I think its
a user doing something but do not know what but maybe if I knew what
form or what linked table or what report. So, I'm looking for a place
where a can send my un-open-able, corrupted front-end and hopefully
find out what got corrupted.
thanks
bobh.

Have you tried to decompile? This will often fix the problem.

If not, then the re-compile afterwards may show you the object that is
giving you the problem.

yamafopa!

[Larry Linson]

"Bob Hynes" wrote

Does anyone know of a place where
a corrupted mdb(front-end) can be
sent and have that place be able to
tell me what got corrupted within
the db?
No, I don't know of anyone offering that specific service. If anyone can do
that for you, I suspect it would be Peter Miller,
http://www.pksolutions.com.

My question would be "why do you want to know?" as knowing that isn't going
to answer the question "what do I do to prevent future corruption".

You will find some excellent information and links about corruption and how
to prevent it at MVP Tony Toews' site,
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm.

If you have multiple users concurrently using the same front end database
file, that is a place to start -- give each user a separate copy of the
front end. Having multiple users in the same monolithic or front-end
database significantly increases the chance that it will be corrupted. If
you have dropped network connections (often due to intermittent errors in a
network interface card), or power outages, or users who power down or
CTRL-ALT-DELETE to End Task while some operation is in progress, that can
corrupt the database, too.

I would also be concerned that you 'restored it from the latest backup'
because a front-end should not be updated in actual use and thus you should
simply be able to provide the user another copy of the same front end you
last provided him/her. I'm not certain why "using UNC for its pathing" is
significant; my multiuser databases allow the user to browse for the
back-end, using the Windows common dialog, if the connection needs to be
"remade", and I don't believe that returns UNC. The code to directly invoke
the Windows Common Dialog API can be found at
http://www.mvps.org/access/api/api0001.htm.

You didn't say "unrepairable", so I wonder if you tried the Compact and
Repair under Database Utilities under Tools in the Access menu? Please
follow up or clarify here in the newsgroup, not by e-mail. Thanks.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
Here's the issue;
All pc's are WindowsNT on a Novell network using Office97 Pro. I built
a db application(work distribution and log app) which has been running
in this environment for more than a year, its a front-end/back-end
setup using UNC for its pathing, both ends get compacted once a
week(with Visual Agent from FMS) and it has had no problems until
about two months ago when one of the users contacted me and told me
they got an error message which said 'unrecognized format' when they
clicked on their desktop shortcut which points to the front-end mdb.
After not being able to open the front-end nor being able to fix it
with Jetcomp.exe I restored it from the latest backup. This error has
now happened three more times and I can not figure it out. I think its
a user doing something but do not know what but maybe if I knew what
form or what linked table or what report. So, I'm looking for a place
where a can send my un-open-able, corrupted front-end and hopefully
find out what got corrupted.
thanks
bobh.

[Tony Toews]

vu******@usexpress.net (Bob Hynes) wrote:

All pc's are WindowsNT on a Novell network using Office97 Pro. I built
a db application(work distribution and log app) which has been running
in this environment for more than a year, its a front-end/back-end
setup

To add to Larry's comment sharing a FE can definitely cause corruptions. Some people
can get away with it. Other's can't.

I specifically created the Auto FE Updater utility so that I could make changes to
the FE MDE as often as I wanted and be quite confident that the next time someone
went to run the app that it would pull in the latest version. For more info on the
errors or the utillity see the free Auto FE Updater utility at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/autofe.htm at my website to keep the FE on each PC up
to date.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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