HELP!!! Database dropping to 1 KB.

[quickemr_groups]

I have VB application that uses and Access 2002 database as the
backend. I have a couple of clients who have had me log on their
system because of errors when logging in to my application. Upon
investigating, I discovered that both of these clients had a database
with a size of only 1KB! The database should have been around 10 MB.
It looks as if the .LDB file replaced the .MDB file.

Now, these clients are not computer savvy and would not even know how
to do something like this. There is nothing in my application that
would do something like this.

Anyone have any clue as to what might be happening???

Thanks in advance.

David

 

[Norman Yuan]

Your VB application accesses the back end database (*.mdb) via Jet Engine
(BTW, it has nothing to do with MS Access in this case), whether you use DAO
or ADO. When a connect from your application is established to the *.mDB
file, Jet Engine create a lock file *.ldb, which is very small in size (1KB
when see from Windows Explorer). When the connection is closed (for example,
when your app is closed, but you can close connection without close the
application, as you probably know), the lock file *.ldb is deleted by Jet
Engine. So, there is no such thing as *.ldb file replaces *.mdb file. You
need to look other causes. If the *.mdb file is gone, something was wrong,
you need to find out why and how. Remember, *.mdb database is a file based
database, uers running your app must have read/write permission to the
folder where *.mdb file is in. So, theoretically, someone could mistakenly
deleted the *.mdb file. Is regular backup in place in case such mistake
occurs?

 

[quickemr_groups]

They are supposed to backup, but of course they didn't!
Just strange that 2 clients have reported the same thing. I have about
110 clients who have been using the program for years and nothing like
this has ever happened.
It is the MDB file that is 1 KB (and it cannot be opened or repaired
by the way). The only way I could think to get this to happen would be
to delete the MDB file while the .LDB file is present and then rename
the .LDB file to .MDB, which is something these clients would have no
clue how to do.

 

[quickemr_groups]

Well, I got a hold of the .MDB named file that was 1 KB and opened it
in Notepad. It is NOT an LDB file as described in the earlier post. So
my theory that the LDB was renamed to MDB by the user is out the
window. This one has me stumped. Cannot for the life of me see how a
database gets down to 1 KB.

-David