Hideous Error Deleted all my forms

[Jim Williams]

I have a database that I've been developing over the course of a few years. It's become quite complex and has about 40 forms in it. I was working on a form and when I went to save the changes, I got an error message, which I don't remember exactly, but something about no record and trying to roll back. In any case when I closed out of the error, every single form in the database had been deleted. I had a backup so I've only lost a few hours work, but I'm irate that this is even possible. Does anyone know what causes such an idiotic thing to happen, or if there's any way to recover?
Thanks.

[NeoPa]

Not from that information I'm afraid Jim.

Maybe they were just unavailable at that time, but having a backup was certainly a good idea. Well done for that.

[tuxalot]

Is it possible that the reports were external to your database and they lost their link?

[Jim Williams]

No, they are all part of the database itself. It actually happened again already. The message said to increase the maximum allowable number of record locks or something to that effect. I don't understand how any records are locked when all I have open is a form in design view, so I remain perplexed and am backing up about every 5 minutes now.

[NeoPa]

Forms (not reports in this case but they behave in a very similar manner in this case) are not linked to other sources. Tables can be linked, and to a limited extent queries can link to Views or other types of query code from remote SQL engines, but not forms or reports.

[NeoPa]

It sounds like you may have some code that doesn't ever release its resources, but frankly we're flying blind here. It's not like it's one of those things that happens every day and we just think "Oh. It must be that then."

If you can produce a copy that reliably exhibits this behaviour after following the instructions in Attach Database (or other work) then I will have a look at it for you. At least then, if it fails to fall over for me, you'll know it's something to do with your setup and not 100% to do with the project. I may even find a problem too. Who knows.

[Jim Williams]

Thanks. If I can figure out a particular sequence that causes it I will provide better info, but so far it's been rather hit and miss. I'll be going along fine editing and saving the forms, and then suddenly it happens (3 times so far) and not always the same form, but very similar forms.

[NeoPa]

Unpredictable problems are always the hardest to find, and therefore the hardest to fix.

[TheSmileyCoder]

If you have not allready tried it, I would suggest you try a /Decompile on your database.

Simply in windows, click start then run and type:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 2003\OFFICE11\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:
\directory\northwind.mdb" /decompile

You may have ot correct the the location of your MSAccess.Exe and of course replace the nortwind path and name with the path to your database.


After that, go to your VBE editor, click Debug->Compile.



If this doesn't give you any results, go through all your code, and make sure that each time you use a SET recordset=, that you also use a SET recordset=Nothing, you can think of it kinda like the trouble that can occur when you forget the closing parenthesis. :)

[neelsfer]

I had a similar problem after i migrated from A2007 to A2010. A day after that i all of a sudden lost every single form in my application - all corrupted also after getting a message. I opened the exact same application in A2007 - everything was working again.
The strange part is that i did numerous changes on it in A2010, before it happened out of the blue.
Solution - i am back on A2007.

Since then i have noticed that with A2007 and A2010 lately, you must have the latest service packs installed, to have full functionality