We have MS Access 2000 database
that is accessed by many users. Quite
often we get error message "MDB needs
to be repaired". What is the reason for it?
As Lynn pointed out, it could be one of a number of things causing this. If
you have all these "many" users (that's not very specific, you understand...
could be "one, two, many" meaning "three" or could be "a hundred") logging
in to the same front end or monolithic database, that significantly
increases the chance of the kind of corruption you are experiencing. If you
have, as is recommended, split into front end (queries, forms, reports,
macros, modules, and local lookup tables) and back end (tables, data, and
relationships) and given each user a copy of the front end, linking to the
tables in the back end in a shared folder, then my experience is that the
most common cause of corruption is "ungraceful termination" -- dropped
network connections while an operation is in progress, power outages, or
users who power of their machine while they have an operation in progress in
the Access database. And, the most frequent of these I've observed are
dropped network connections due to intermittent errors in a Network
Interface Card; in one case, however, the replacement of the entire network
adminstration department, and a good network setup by the replacement
administrators worked very nicely.
How to avoid it?
See MVP Tony Toews' site,
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm, as
suggested by Lynn. It is the best collection of information and links on
this subject that I know about.
Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
