Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Repairing corrupt indexes in Access 2007 database

MS Access is a relational database management system (RDBMS) from the MS Office product suite. It is usually packaged with other products of MS Office but can be procured as a standalone application as well. The Access databases are simple to use and provide fast performance. The performance of database can be bettered using indexes, which allow you to search for information in a faster way. However, sometimes the indexes in the databases can get corrupt because of various reasons such as human errors, abrupt system shutdown when the database is open, virus infections, power surges, etc. To overcome such situations, you should take appropriate corrective measures. However, if you are unable to do so then you should use an Access database recovery tool to recover Access file.

Consider a scenario wherein you are working on an Access 2007 database. There is a power surge and the system shuts down abruptly. You open the database when the power is restored but find that some of the rows in a table are shown as “#Deleted”.

Cause:

The most possible cause of this behavior is that the index has corrupted because of abrupt system shutdown.

Resolution:
To resolve this situation, you should replace the corrupted database with its updated and clean backup. However, if the backup is not updated then you should use the in-built repair utility of Access to repair the indexes. If it still does not help, then you should perform the following steps to recover Access database:
1.Create a query into the table and try to exclude those rows that have been corrupted.
2.Convert it to a Make Table query once you have got the best range of uncorrupted records. You can use it under Query Type on the Query Tools tab in the Access Ribbon.
3.Run the query to create a new table.
4.Delete the old table.
5.Compact the database to remove any pointers to the corrupted table. You can do this by following Office Button | Manage | Compact.
6.Rename the new table as the older one.
7.Recreate the indexes and relationships in the new table. If you are unable to create a relationship, use the Unmatched Query Wizard to identify which records are missing.

This should solve the problem. However, if you are still facing the issue then you should use a third-party Access recovery tool to recover Access database. Such read-only tools are able to recover Access databases by employing fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.

Article Source :- http://www.progtalk.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=2364

Monday, May 3, 2010

Records Marked as “Deleted” in MS Access Database

The records saved in the MS Access database form core component of Access database files (.mdb and .accdb). You can save your records in various MS Access database components like tables, forms, views, reports etc. Various factors responsible for the damage of records can be concurrent modification by two or more users on the same record, software bugs, network hardware failure and more. In such situations, you need to recover the damaged records by using latest data backup. However, if you have not maintained any backup, you need to recover and restore the lost data by using Access Recovery tools.

Consider a scenario when you attempt to access the records saved in the “Marketing” table, you find that some of the records have been marked as “#Deleted.” This indicates that the Access database has been corrupted. Few main reasons for the Access database corruption are discussed as follows:

Two users in multi-user environment were attempting to modify the records of the same table.
Improper shutdown of the Microsoft Jet connection due to power outage.
ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and Data Access Objects (DAO)
Faulty Network Hardware
Malicious software like virus
Large number of open and close operations in a sequence.

Resolution:

To resolve the above issue and access the database records in “Marketing” table, you need to use an inbuilt repair utility known as Compact and Repair. To use the utility, you need to follow these steps:

1.Go to the Tools menu, select Database Utilities and then click Compact and Repair Database.
2.Locate and then click the database in the ‘Database to Compact From’ dialog box, and then click Compact.
3.Select an appropriate folder location for the new file in the ‘Compact Database Into’ dialog box, type a unique name for the file and then click on Save.

However, the above inbuilt utility can not be used to repair the database greater than
2 GB in size. In such circumstances, you need to repair and restore the Access database components by using advanced and effective Access Repair tool. Such access database repair utilities employ influential scanning methods to provide absolute and systematic database repair of all Access database components. With interactive and user-friendly interface, these utilities can be easily used to repair and restore corrupted Access databases without prior technical knowledge.

Access Recovery is the most reliable Access Database Repair utility that offers comprehensive repair and restoration in all software related data loss scenarios. It is compatible with Microsoft Access 2007, 2003, XP (2002) and 2000. This access repair utility supports Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT.