Access 95 - Performing illegal operation and shutting down problem.

[Bill Lindsay]

Hello:

We are using a MS Access for Windows 95 - Version 7.0
customized with code written in 1995. It runs on the
Windows 98, second version, 4.10.2222A operating system.
Recently, several time a day, we have been getting an
Access warning window stating: "This program has performed
an illegal operation and will be shut down.". We then
either close the program or it closes itself.

There seems to be no decernable pattern as to when this
will happen. However, it seems to happen more often when
we are working in some other proram, like Outlook Express,
than we are actually working in the Access database. Our
Outlook Express is version 6.0.

If it matters, our browser is Internet Explorer version
6.0.2800.1106(IS). One of our boxes runs with 256 MB of
RAM on a Pentium [r]II processor and another runs with64
MB RAM on a Pentium [r}Pro Processor.

Any suggestions?

Thank you, Bill Lindsay

 

[John Viescas]

Bill-

The bad news is Access 95 is absolutely the most unstable version of Access
ever released. They just didn't have the time to transition from the old
16-bit code in Access 2 to the new 32-bit platform and keep it stable. The
Visual Basic project in your database could well be corrupted. If you still
have Access 95, you could try fixing it by creating a new database and
importing all the objects from your old one. Do a full compile and then
compact before sending out the new copy.

The next best choice is convert the database to Access 97 or later. A97 is
rock-solid. The one downside to 97 is Microsoft will be dropping support
for it early next year (A95 is already unsupported).

Good luck!

--
John Viescas, author
"Microsoft Office Access 2003 Inside Out" (coming soon)
"Running Microsoft Access 2000"
"SQL Queries for Mere Mortals"
http://www.viescas.com/
(Microsoft Access MVP since 1993)