Post Office 2003 SP3 problem

[Ron Hinds]

I'm having a serious issue after upgrading to Office 2003 SP3. Three out of
the several hundred forms in my database no longer allow me to make changes
to the underlying code. To be more precise, they won't allow me to *save*
changes to the underlying code. Every time I try to save, even a tirival
change (hit Enter on a line of existing code) I get the "Microsoft Access
has encountered a problem and needs to close" message. This is the error
message:

AppName: msaccess.exe AppVer: 11.0.8166.0 AppStamp:46437912
ModName: ntdll.dll ModVer: 5.1.2600.2180 ModStamp:411096b4
fDebug: 0 Offset: 0003426d

I'm using XP Pro SP2. A co-worker, who has a machine that is configured
virtually identically to mine, except SP3 hasn't been installed, has no
problems with the same database. If I copy his working database to mine, I
get the same result. I have tried decompiling, no luck. I have created a new
database, it will import all but these three forms from his working database
(crashes with the same error message). So I created another new database,
this time I started with those three forms - they imported OK. Then I
imported the rest of the forms, modules, reports, etc. As soon as I try to
make a change to one of those three - boom! I have Microsoft Virtual PC on
this machine with an installation of W2K Pro SP4 and Office 2003 SP2. If I
open the same database in it, I can change the forms in question with no
problem. The obvious answer is to uninstall SP3. Unfortunately, it appears
Microsoft made no provision for doing so ;-(

On a side note: the installation of SP3 itself seems to be buggy. Trying to
do it from Windows Update *appears* to succeed, but opening *any* Office app
and clicking on Help | About shows the version to be SP2. I had to download
the executable then run it locally to get it to install. This happened on my
home machine as well. Doesn't Microsoft test these things?

 

[Paul Shapiro]

I'm also having some issues with Office SP3. I think mine were fixed by
deleting the malfunctioning forms and importing them from a previously
working program version. I'll know better in the next few days. I use
SourceSafe integration, and I think something in that process is sometimes
corrupting forms and/or reports during Access version changes. I had a
similar issue with a db developed in Access 2003 SP2 that was then
corrupting in Access 2007. In that case I was able to reproduce the problem
and trace it to the SourceSafe integration. An MS tech support engineer was
also able to reproduce the problem. He came up with a workaround of opening
every form in the older Access version before ever trying to open the db in
the newer Access version. Once the original corruption issues were repaired,
that seems to "reliably" prevent the problem.

I gave up using multiple Access versions on a single computer some time ago
as too unreliable. I prefer using a separate virtual machine for each Access
version.

The Office 2003 SP3 release notes stated that there is no uninstall. The
only way to get back to SP2 is remove Office and reinstall.

 

[Ron Hinds]

Update: I used System Restore to go back to the day before I "upgraded" to
SP3 and all is well again. Guess I'll have to wait for SP4...

 

[Ryan S.]

I've also experienced this issue. A MDB, authored in Acc2003 SP2,
experiences 0xc0000005 errors in ntdll.dll, when opened in SP3 (same
error signature as Ron Hinds). I can't seem to pinpoint any
corruption, per se, as it's only occurred with one form and one
table. The table opens reliably in Design Mode, but attempting to
view data throws the exception. Compact/repair, decompilation, and
exporting to blank MDBs do not resolve the problem in SP3. However,
after opening said files in SP3, I can open them without error or
exception in SP2.

Hooray for test VMs. At least now I can safely nuke and reinstall
this setup without having to fret about backtracing my SVN repository
for mandelbugs. Surprisingly, I'm not seeing anything on the KB yet.
Anyone have any update on this?