Corrupted Access Database Files

  • Hello

    I would really appreciate if I can get a tool to repair my corrupted access databases, it is really ver important for me,

    Thanks,

    Dev

  • There is no tool to repair Access DB file but what is the issue you are running into?

    The normal repair that I have used and been successful with is create new database and import all objects from the old database. You can try the Microsoft Access built in repair option but I have not had much success with that option.

    Mohit.

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  • Microsoft have a tool called JetComp that will fix more problems than the inbuilt option in Access - you can get it here:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/295334/en-us

  • First of all, make a copy of the file before you attempt any repair.

    Second, try to determine which type of corruption you have: system, tables, or VBA. Or total failure.

    If you get a message like 'no read permission on MSys' or similar then the system tables are corrupted & usually the only option is to restore a backup. OTOH if you get 'unrecognized database format' then Access might be able to repair the file in spite of system corruption.

    If one or more of your tables is showing #Error that often happens with Memo fields, you can try copying those records with all columns except the Memo field into a temporary table, delete the bad records from the original table, and then append from the temp back into the original table. You'll lose the contents of the memo fields but the rest of the data should be intact.

    If you can open all the tables but the application won't run, you would suspect a VBA corruption, two types of that. 1) Open the app with the /decompile command-line option which might fix it or 2) Open the VBA environment (Alt-F11) and click Debug ~ Compile which can might find some code that has been over-written with garbage, so you can fix that.

    In the case of "total failure" you would see a prompt for a Database Password but you don't have a database password set - that can happen if somebody tried opening the file using Word or Excel & the auto-save kicked-in & ruined the MDB, in which case restoring a backup is the only option.

    As others have stated, if the file is saveable you can try to create a new database & import all the objects. Access might freeze on whatever object is corrupted so you can restore only what you need from a backup copy.

    If you do not have a suitable backup & none of the repair efforts work, there are companies on the web that repair Access files but they can be quite expensive.

    HTH

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