Corrupted A2003 DB

I'm trying to recover data from a corrupted .mde file. It's the
backend of my split database, and I cannot for the life of me figure
out how to get in there and open it.

Symptoms: Users reported around noon that they were unable to re-open
the database if they closed out of it. I checked it out, and it
indicated the backend MDE file was corrupted. The message 'The
datebase "c:\blablabla needs to be repaired or is not a database file"

I kicked all users out, (Manually going from desk to desk as I was
unable to even shift bypass in to trigger off my module that
automatically kicks them out) and attempted to repair a copy of the
corrupted file. Each repair gets about 50% of the way through (same
spot every time) and then crashes.

I've tried:

-Restarting my computer and doing the repair again (failed)
-Re-copying from the original corruption and repairing again (failed)
-Creating a new MDB and importing the tables from the corrupted file
(fails because when you go to import it gives you the same 'needs to
be repaired or is not a database file' error, which causes it to
crash)
-Importing into Excel (fails, can't connect to db)
-JetComp.exe (fails. I think this is not compatible with A2003 in an
Win XP environment?)

I can't figure any way to get in and do even basic data recovery. Yes,
I have a backup, but we are still losing 6 hours of overtime labor for
25 employees. (over $5k), and each and every one of those people wants
my head on a stick. I downloaded 2 other 3rd party utilities to repair
it. I can't use Nucleus-Kernel-Access.exe because I don't (and will
never get approval for. Our ntwk admins are strickly by the book) it's
installation. The other option, ofixdemo.exe, seemed to work, but
wouldn't save the corrected file unless I forked over $300. By the
time I get approval for that it would be too late anyway.

I have to believe that the table structure and its data are largely
intact, because people who were still logged in had no trouble for the
four hours between when symptoms started and I brought down the DB.
(too bad they hadn't told me earlier).

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:22:31 -0800 (PST), Andy_Khosravi@bcbsmn.com
wrote:

Let me get this straight: management won't approve $300 RIGHT NOW so
you can potentially save them $5000. I bet you the president of the
company does not know about this. I would be in his office this
minute.

I am still trying to figure out why your back-end is an MDE. What
benefit were you trying to obtain?

Peter Miller (pksolutions.com) is still the best repair service I know
of. If you can afford the delay while he fixes it, that would be best.

-Tom.



>I'm trying to recover data from a corrupted .mde file. It's the
>backend of my split database, and I cannot for the life of me figure
>out how to get in there and open it.
>
>Symptoms: Users reported around noon that they were unable to re-open
>the database if they closed out of it. I checked it out, and it
>indicated the backend MDE file was corrupted. The message 'The
>datebase "c:\blablabla needs to be repaired or is not a database file"
>
>I kicked all users out, (Manually going from desk to desk as I was
>unable to even shift bypass in to trigger off my module that
>automatically kicks them out) and attempted to repair a copy of the
>corrupted file. Each repair gets about 50% of the way through (same
>spot every time) and then crashes.
>
>I've tried:
>
>-Restarting my computer and doing the repair again (failed)
>-Re-copying from the original corruption and repairing again (failed)
>-Creating a new MDB and importing the tables from the corrupted file
>(fails because when you go to import it gives you the same 'needs to
>be repaired or is not a database file' error, which causes it to
>crash)
>-Importing into Excel (fails, can't connect to db)
>-JetComp.exe (fails. I think this is not compatible with A2003 in an
>Win XP environment?)
>
>I can't figure any way to get in and do even basic data recovery. Yes,
>I have a backup, but we are still losing 6 hours of overtime labor for
>25 employees. (over $5k), and each and every one of those people wants
>my head on a stick. I downloaded 2 other 3rd party utilities to repair
>it. I can't use Nucleus-Kernel-Access.exe because I don't (and will
>never get approval for. Our ntwk admins are strickly by the book) it's
>installation. The other option, ofixdemo.exe, seemed to work, but
>wouldn't save the corrected file unless I forked over $300. By the
>time I get approval for that it would be too late anyway.
>
>I have to believe that the table structure and its data are largely
>intact, because people who were still logged in had no trouble for the
>four hours between when symptoms started and I brought down the DB.
>(too bad they hadn't told me earlier).

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

On Jan 24, 8:26=A0pm, Tom van Stiphout wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:22:31 -0800 (PST), Andy_Khosr...@bcbsmn.com
> wrote:
>
> Let me get this straight: management won't approve $300 RIGHT NOW so
> you can potentially save them $5000. =A0I bet you the president of the
> company does not know about this. I would be in his office this
> minute.

>
> I am still trying to figure out why your back-end is an MDE. What
> benefit were you trying to obtain?
>
> Peter Miller (pksolutions.com) is still the best repair service I know
> of. If you can afford the delay while he fixes it, that would be best.
>
> -Tom.

I work at a big company.Getting clerical things like that done take
time...Serious time, especially since I'm not affiliated with 'Big
T'. It tooke 18 months for my request for a laptop to be granted,
and we are at 4 months and counting for my company cell phone to be
delivered. $300 isn't much, but there are plenty of bean counters who
will want documentation as well as the ntwk admins who will probably
insist on vetting the program and 'officially approving it'. It'll get
done...but by then it will be too late for this particular problem
unless I pay for it myself.

Regarding the .mde on the backend...well its force of habit really. It
does have 1 form in it that is set to load first and docmd.quit unless
you shift bypass in. Not exactly high tech security, but it does the
trick. I suppose there really is no benefit to the .mde, but I don't
think it does any harm?

What I was really hoping for was some other creative way to get at
those tables. I wanted to try and salvage their work as well as help
maintain their confidence in my application. They were previouisly
doing all this work on paper and filing it away in giant banks of file
cabinets, (No, I'm not just kidding.) and very mistrustful of anything
called a 'database'. Today didn't help.

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:46:12 -0800 (PST), Andy_Khosravi@bcbsmn.com
wrote:

I am sorry to hear that. Access and "mission critical" don't go
together. That's not to slam Access. I use it all the time. But you
have to accept that it for what it is, and accept that it will corrupt
beyond repair. It may be today, or 10 years from now.
You may want to consider upsizing the BE to SQL Server after the dust
settles. The free Express version comes at an attractive price, and IT
will love the "SQL Server" buzzword.

Even in a large co I would go over my direct manager and try to get
the attention of the branch manager - anyone who can do the math of
$300 vs #5000.

-Tom.



>On Jan 24, 8:26 pm, Tom van Stiphout wrote:
>> On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:22:31 -0800 (PST), Andy_Khosr...@bcbsmn.com
>> wrote:
>>
>> Let me get this straight: management won't approve $300 RIGHT NOW so
>> you can potentially save them $5000.  I bet you the president of the
>> company does not know about this. I would be in his office this
>> minute.
>
>>
>> I am still trying to figure out why your back-end is an MDE. What
>> benefit were you trying to obtain?
>>
>> Peter Miller (pksolutions.com) is still the best repair service I know
>> of. If you can afford the delay while he fixes it, that would be best.
>>
>> -Tom.
>
>I work at a big company.Getting clerical things like that done take
>time...Serious time, especially since I'm not affiliated with 'Big
>T'. It tooke 18 months for my request for a laptop to be granted,
>and we are at 4 months and counting for my company cell phone to be
>delivered. $300 isn't much, but there are plenty of bean counters who
>will want documentation as well as the ntwk admins who will probably
>insist on vetting the program and 'officially approving it'. It'll get
>done...but by then it will be too late for this particular problem
>unless I pay for it myself.
>
>Regarding the .mde on the backend...well its force of habit really. It
>does have 1 form in it that is set to load first and docmd.quit unless
>you shift bypass in. Not exactly high tech security, but it does the
>trick. I suppose there really is no benefit to the .mde, but I don't
>think it does any harm?
>
>What I was really hoping for was some other creative way to get at
>those tables. I wanted to try and salvage their work as well as help
>maintain their confidence in my application. They were previouisly
>doing all this work on paper and filing it away in giant banks of file
>cabinets, (No, I'm not just kidding.) and very mistrustful of anything
>called a 'database'. Today didn't help.

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

Andy_Khosravi@bcbsmn.com wrote:

>-JetComp.exe (fails. I think this is not compatible with A2003 in an
>Win XP environment?)

No, JetComp is quite compatible with A2003 in a Win XP environment. What specific
problems are you having with JetComp.

>I have to believe that the table structure and its data are largely
>intact, because people who were still logged in had no trouble for the
>four hours between when symptoms started and I brought down the DB.
>(too bad they hadn't told me earlier).

Yes, that's standard behavior.

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
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

Tom van Stiphout wrote:

>I am sorry to hear that. Access and "mission critical" don't go
>together.

Yeah, but it sounds like he can recover his data by doing data entry. So it's very
inconvenient but I wouldn't call it mission critical. Mission critical would be
something such as a cell centre or hotel reservation system. Lose hotel reservations
and the hotel is in big, big trouble.

As far as big corps go well, that's why folks leave them to go to smaller corps.

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
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

Yes, indeed this incident has highlighted that I need to get this DB
scaled up to something a little more industrial then Access. That's
long term.

So, nobody knows of an alternative to hiring a service or buying a
program? Looks like I will get approval for the program, but it will
take at least a week to procure.

Thanks for the comments so far. Always nice to see a response to my
posts =)

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

On Jan 28, 11:04=A0am, Andy_Khosr...@bcbsmn.com wrote:
> Yes, indeed this incident has highlighted that I need to get this DB
> scaled up to something a little more industrial then Access. That's
> long term.
>
> So, nobody knows of an alternative to hiring a service or buying a
> program? Looks like I will get approval for the program, but it will
> take at least a week to procure.
>
> Thanks for the comments so far. Always nice to see a response to my
> posts =3D)

You could always try putting the repair expense on your credit card
and getting reimbursed later. Might save you some personal headache.

Bruce

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

Bruce wrote:
> On Jan 28, 11:04 am, Andy_Khosr...@bcbsmn.com wrote:
>> Yes, indeed this incident has highlighted that I need to get this DB
>> scaled up to something a little more industrial then Access. That's
>> long term.
>>
>> So, nobody knows of an alternative to hiring a service or buying a
>> program? Looks like I will get approval for the program, but it will
>> take at least a week to procure.
>>
>> Thanks for the comments so far. Always nice to see a response to my
>> posts =)
>
> You could always try putting the repair expense on your credit card
> and getting reimbursed later. Might save you some personal headache.
>
> Bruce
This may be a duplicate suggestion, but have you tried exporting the
tables to a new, clean MDB? If you do that, it will tell you which
tables have problems and which do not. As I recall, after an error is
reported, that table is skipped and the next table processed. So you
can recover all data in all tables that do not have a problem.

then you need to go through the tables having a problem and find the
problem. One way to do that is to create some vba to read each record
and each field and find out where it chokes. Then either delete that
record and repeat or bypass that record in code and repeat.

If you can delete the erroneous records, you can export the good part of
the table.

then with your COPY of the problem database, look at the record that is
bad. Manually transcribe it to the new database.

HTH

Bob

Re: Corrupted A2003 DB

Andy_Khosravi@bcbsmn.com wrote:

>So, nobody knows of an alternative to hiring a service or buying a
>program?

There are a few other faint hope things you can try at the Microsoft Access
Corruption FAQ at http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

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
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/