Data bound controls bug?

[Kenneth Courville]

Hello,

This problem has been a little unusual for me. I have an Access
database, and, on several forms, I've seen this issue occur wotj
listbox and combobox controls.

Basically, I'm just putting either control on a form to serve as a
look-up to a table for a field on that form. It seems that, very
intermittently, the controls will not populate with data.

Sometimes you'll open the form, and no data will be displayed. When
it does not display, closing and re-opening the database and/or form
will sometimes fix the issue.

I've tried using the Access wizards to create the controls, and I
tried setting the properties manually.

From what I can tell, this only seems to occur on older PC's. The
OS's I've witnessed this on are Windows 95, 98SE, and NT 4.0 Terminal
Server. These PC's were at least 4-5 years old, running Pentium
(original) and AMD processors.

This database is in Access 2000 format running on PC's with Access
2000. During the development of this database, it has been created on
my PC with Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro, Access 2000, Access XP, and
Access 2003. I have yet to see this occur on my PC.

I've applied all Office and Windows service packs and updates I can
find. The only updates I'm thinking I have not tried yet are the
latest MDAC.

Any ideas on this?

Thanks.

[Larry Linson]

I don't think the latest MDAC is going to be of any help.

I don't know what is causing the problem, but perhaps it is that the older
computers just don't have the computing power to keep up with everything,
or, even more likely, there just isn't enough memory.

If yours is an environment like many, the company may have quite a number of
unused Access 97 licenses. If that is the case, you might try reinstalling
Access 97 on those machines, saving the database in Access 97 format, and
seeing if that does not run better. Access 97 did not make as strong demands
on system resources as later versions, and was a stable, solid release of
Access.

If you did not use any Access-2000-specific functions in the application,
saving in Access 97 format will be easy; if you did, then you'll need to
replace those Access-2000-specific functions with alternatives compatible
with Access 97.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

"Kenneth Courville" <kr*********@msn.com> wrote in message
news:e4*************************@posting.google.co m...

Hello,

This problem has been a little unusual for me. I have an Access
database, and, on several forms, I've seen this issue occur wotj
listbox and combobox controls.

Basically, I'm just putting either control on a form to serve as a
look-up to a table for a field on that form. It seems that, very
intermittently, the controls will not populate with data.

Sometimes you'll open the form, and no data will be displayed. When
it does not display, closing and re-opening the database and/or form
will sometimes fix the issue.

I've tried using the Access wizards to create the controls, and I
tried setting the properties manually.

From what I can tell, this only seems to occur on older PC's. The
OS's I've witnessed this on are Windows 95, 98SE, and NT 4.0 Terminal
Server. These PC's were at least 4-5 years old, running Pentium
(original) and AMD processors.

This database is in Access 2000 format running on PC's with Access
2000. During the development of this database, it has been created on
my PC with Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro, Access 2000, Access XP, and
Access 2003. I have yet to see this occur on my PC.

I've applied all Office and Windows service packs and updates I can
find. The only updates I'm thinking I have not tried yet are the
latest MDAC.

Any ideas on this?

Thanks.

[Kenneth Courville]

Thanks for the response.

I'm not so sure it has to do with memory. I've seen this occur in a
session on a Win NT 4.0 terminal server with plenty of spare hard drive
space and a 1/2 Gb of RAM... usually a least a 100 Mb or so of that RAM
was available.

I am pretty convinced, though, that it has to do with older OS's
somehow.

They do not have any licenses for Office 97, and I have already
recommended that they replace their PC's with current technology, but
that seems to be out of the question at the moment.

I'm thinking I'll try to convince them to just add some RAM to one of
their PC's (assuming it's still sold) and see if it helps. They are all
running on 64 Mb, so it couldn't hurt.

Otherwise, they'll have to just live with it. I didn't charge them for
the database solution, so they have nothing to complain about if they
don't follow my recommendations.

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[Larry Linson]

Well, as far as Access and memory, "more is better" (within reasonable
bounds), so that may well help. As a matter of fact, as I look at miniumum
processor and memory requirements stated on the Office XP box, they appear
laughably low both for processor and memory.

You might also look at the O/S requirements... e.g., for Win NT 4.0, it
specifies SP 6. Could be that different things are causing the same problem
in different environments.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

"Kenneth Courville" <[e-mail]> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.frii.net...

Thanks for the response.

I'm not so sure it has to do with memory. I've seen this occur in a
session on a Win NT 4.0 terminal server with plenty of spare hard drive
space and a 1/2 Gb of RAM... usually a least a 100 Mb or so of that RAM
was available.

I am pretty convinced, though, that it has to do with older OS's
somehow.

They do not have any licenses for Office 97, and I have already
recommended that they replace their PC's with current technology, but
that seems to be out of the question at the moment.

I'm thinking I'll try to convince them to just add some RAM to one of
their PC's (assuming it's still sold) and see if it helps. They are all
running on 64 Mb, so it couldn't hurt.

Otherwise, they'll have to just live with it. I didn't charge them for
the database solution, so they have nothing to complain about if they
don't follow my recommendations.

----------------------------------------
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Don't just participate in USENET...get rewarded for it!