Access 2003 Crashes and corrupt ADP projects

[Dredy]

Hi,

we have a big big problem.

We have a large ADP project (900 objects Forms-Reports-Modules)
Recently the project has become unstable.
Not always, but often, when modifying a Form or a Report the program crashes
or prompt with Memory errors.

Project corrupted?
We tried to add the project to sourceSafe and then recreate it from
SourceSafe, but the errors remains. Source safe extract every object to
files, opening each object in access, in order to export it. If some object
is corrupted the extraction fails. Our project has been extracted and
recreated succesfully.


Any help on this issue?

many thanks

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

To recover from corruption, I'd suggest:

Always work on a copy of the database. Working on the original may make it
impossible to fix it.

Try using SaveAsText LoadFromText (it may not work on ADPs)

Any outside program which may save the file, may corrupt it. I don't use
SourceSafe, so I can't give you any specifics on that product, but I'd
suggest avoiding it until you are sure that it isn't the cause or a
contributor to your problem.

 

[Dredy]

Hi Arvin,

the problem isn't caused by SourceSafe.
We tried to add the project to SourceSafe because SourceSafe, in order to
add the project to the VSS DB, extract every object to a text File.
Then SourceSafe permits to recreate the original ADP project from the
extracted text files. During this process every object is addet to a new adp
project. it also checks the integrity of the objects saving them in
background.

Unfortunately, the project is unstable even after recreation.

To reproduce the crash on my PC and on athers PC in my environment:

1. Open the ADP
2. Open a Report in Design Mode
3. create a Textbox
4. change the textbox controlType to Label
5. Enter a word as caption for the label
6. Save the Report

a. MessageBox "Memory unavailable" (Translated from italian)
b. Unable to close/save the object
c. Force Access Shutdown
d. Re-open Access
e. Compact/Repair the database
f. aaaaargghhh!!!
Every Form and Report has lost his code-behind
No way to make the project functional
g. Sigh... restore from last backup...

We save the project 5/6 times a day, because for every object change we need
to re-distribuite the ADE project to 50 clients.
The backup process is integrated in the deploy process.
We have 10 backups per month for the original ADP in the last 12 months,
but the problem seems to be introduced recently.

An old file, from June i.e., becomes unusable if modified today.

Does anyone have notice of recent Windows/Office Update tha can be the cause
of this behavior??

Many Thanks i.a.

 

[Dredy]

Hi again,

any other considerations:

we found that in two operations the crash appears everytime:

1. Open a report
Copy a textbox
Change it to LABEL
Write a caption
Save
Access Crashes

2. Open a Module
Write a line of code (even a comment)
Save (all OK)
Debug Code (From menu - all OK)
Save Again
Access Crashes and deletes all the code from all the project


The 2nd option is the worse because it "zaps" all the code-behind from Forms
and reports.

Any idea?

Thanks,
Dredy-italy

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

I see two possibilities: 1- the recent introduction of Office 2003 SP3 or 2-
your project is to big for ADP; ie, Windows is lacking ressources.

Did you try to split your ADP in two, for example keeping the forms in one
project and putting the reports into another project?

Cleaning up the user properties on the sql-server database could also be a
good idea.

--
Sylvain Lafontaine, ing.
MVP - Technologies Virtual-PC
E-mail: sylvain aei ca (fill the blanks, no spam please)

 

[Paul Shapiro]

Have you recently changed Access versions, or installed an Office Service
Pack? I've found lately that Access can be excruciating sensitive to these
changes, with results similar to what you describe. Using SourceSafe
integration appeared to exacerbate the problem. I had some forms where
removing the hotkey assignment on a label was enough to stop the corruption.
When using a db created from SourceSafe with Access 2003, I would get random
corruption if I opened the same db in Access 2007. MS Access tech support
came up with the workaround of opening every form in Access 2003 before ever
opening the db in Access 2007.

You might try starting with the cleanest copy of your db you can get. Then
create a new empty adp and connect it to the same SQL Server. Import objects
in groups, trying to see which one(s) cause problems. For example, you could
start with importing all the modules. If you can compile at that point (no
references to forms or reports in the modules), so much the better. Then try
all the reports, and see if things appear stable. Etc. If you see problems
with reports, for example, start over and next time import half the reports,
etc. until you hopefully find a few problematic objects. In my case, it
usually turned out to be just a few objects. I was able to import older
versions from backups, and then things became stable again. SourceSafe
integration worked fine, as long as I was only using a single Access
version/service pack level.

You also mentioned having 900 total Access objects. I seem to remember that
Access only supports 1024 total objects, although I could be wrong about
that. If so, stability might be poor as you approach the limit. While not
ideal, I wonder if splitting the adp into 2 separate adp's might help?

 

[Dredy]

Hi Paul,

yes, we recently (december) have installed the Service Pack 3 (Office 2003)
but the crashes has began last couple of weeks...

We decided to uninstall and reinstall the entire office (Clean)
Then we re-installed the SP2, but the crashes remains

If the problem was caused by SP3, the db has been corrupted starting from
December, this means that all the daily backups, starting from december are
corrupted. The big problem is in tracking the changes from december to
today....

Or the corruption can be caused by a most recent Update.
We'll try to go back and try to edit an older backup.
I think that i could find a old stable file.

Good luck (for me .....)

Bye and thanks

Dredy - Italy

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

There have been several bugs reported (mostly fixed) from SP3. It also may
be peculiar to the Italian version. Fortunately, there is an Italian Access
newsgroup and an excellent Italian Access MVP to help.

microsoft.public.it.office.access

is the newsgroup, and Cinzia Pagani is the MVP.

 

[Alan]

Hi,

we have a big big problem.

We have a large ADP project (900 objects Forms-Reports-Modules)
Recently the project has become unstable.
Not always, but often, when modifying a Form or a Report the program crashes
or prompt with Memory errors.

Projectcorrupted?
We tried to add the project to sourceSafe and then recreate it from
SourceSafe, but the errors remains. Source safe extract every object to
files, opening each object inaccess, in order to export it. If some object
iscorrupted the extraction fails. Our project has been extracted and
recreated succesfully.

Any help on this issue?

many thanks

Hi,

There is a tool called Advanced Access Repair. I have used it to
repair many corrupt Access MDB files successfully. Its homepage is
http://www.datanumen.com/aar/ Maybe you can have a try.

Alan

 

[Paul Shapiro]

I think Access has a limit of 1000 modules, including the modules for forms
and reports. Maybe you're getting near that limit? Has the project been
converted recently from one Access version to another? I've gotten some
intermittently corrupted objects during conversions. If you can identify the
problematic object(s), deleting them and recreating from a copy has worked
for me.

Hi,

we have a big big problem.

We have a large ADP project (900 objects Forms-Reports-Modules)
Recently the project has become unstable.
Not always, but often, when modifying a Form or a Report the program
crashes
or prompt with Memory errors.

Projectcorrupted?
We tried to add the project to sourceSafe and then recreate it from
SourceSafe, but the errors remains. Source safe extract every object to
files, opening each object inaccess, in order to export it. If some object
iscorrupted the extraction fails. Our project has been extracted and
recreated succesfully.

Any help on this issue?

many thanks

Hi,

There is a tool called Advanced Access Repair. I have used it to
repair many corrupt Access MDB files successfully. Its homepage is
http://www.datanumen.com/aar/ Maybe you can have a try.

Alan

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

The actual limit is 1024 modules. That includes forms and reports that have
their HasModule property set to True, whether or not the module actually
exists.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

There is a tool called Advanced Access Repair. I have used it to
repair many corrupt Access MDB files successfully. Its homepage is
http://www.datanumen.com/aar/ Maybe you can have a try.

You also work for that company. Posting without disclosing any
connection is highly unethical and sleazy.

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/

 

[vish dwi]

If your database is corrupt, try to import forms and queries in new blank database. Then apply compact and repair utility. Database will work fine. If still it show error that means database is critically corrupted Then you should use some access repair utility. I know one utility that is stellar phoenix access recovery, you can try this or can search on google.

Download link : http://www.repair-access-file.com

Hope this helps

 

[vish dwi]

"If your database is corrupt, try to import forms and queries in new blank database. Then apply compact and repair utility. Database will work fine. If still it show error that means database is critically corrupted Then you should use some access repair utility. I know one utility that is stellar phoenix access recovery, you can try this or can search on google.

Download link : http://www.repair-access-file.com

Hope this helps"