Access Database is getting corrupt again and again

Hi Wayne,

There is a third possibility, which is that Microsoft is testing a solution and will provide more information when they have definitive information to share.

Access is almost thirty years old, and a lot of the core code hasn't changed much for a long time.  As the operating system develops and changes, sometimes it exposes things in the program that used to work, but now may encounter issues.

It can indeed be difficult to isolate an issue that is not reproducible so we can't examine it directly, and sometimes that means it takes time to understand it. We also want to make certain that when fixing this problem, we don't introduce any new problems.

We are interested in fixing the problem, and I will let you know when I can give you more concrete information.

Shane Groff

Senior Bozo Engineer

Hi Shane. Ok, I take back the "bozo" term but a LOT of people are extremely frustrated by this issue. It is having a very negative impact on both developers and their clients and has been present for a very long time.

I don't understand how you can say that the problem is not reproducible. This issue has many people tearing their hair out. I question the amount of resources that are being deployed to find a fix.

Well said Wayne.

I suggested a few months back that Microsoft could easily contact someone on this list who has current sites experiencing the problem and, with permission from their customer, give them remote access so that Microsoft engineers could examine log files etc.  Surely they would be able to determine the cause - it is a matter of assigning enough resources to finding a solution.

My fear is that as more of our customers are forced to move over to Windows 10 as computers are replaced etc,  that our currently stable sites will start to experience regular data corruptions due to this problem. Not a prospect I want to face and explain to customers.

What sort of reception are people getting from the IT department when they ask them to disable leasing on the server and client machines in medium to large organisations? I have a small client of about 15 seats that has a contract IT provider and have had to ask him to incorporate the workaround. This wasn't an issue and network performance seems to still be ok.

I have a feeling that it would be an issue with a larger organisation who has their own IT department. Just this morning I've been asked to provide a quote to just such an organisation. I don't know for sure yet, but I think they are using Windows 10. I'm now in a position where I could supply them with a highly unreliable system with the only way of fixing it being to ask IT to incorporate a workaround that they may not be willing to do because of the reported side issues such as impacted network performance. 8 months? into this issue it should no longer be an issue.

Large companies are typically not on the cutting edge so as to never have to deal with exactly this type of issue!  Normally, they hold back 6 months to a year, or a generation or 2 behind to ensure stability (amongst other things).

The issue I've faced with my smaller clients isn't me requesting a registry change, most apply it immediately or let me do it, but the real issue is down time because of the issue.  It can take hours or days of this repetitive issue before they call me in.  So countless hours where mission critical systems are down, employees are being paid, but effectively can't work, telling clients "our system is down please call back later", ...  to the point that I am just finishing up migrating one client's Access db (been running flawlessly for 8-10 years now)  to another platform because it impacted his business so much.  After a couple botched updates that took them down previously and then this, the owner said enough is enough.  He figures the investment will pay itself off with just one more such issue out of Redmond.  It is sad, because he was very satisfied with the database otherwise, but business people don't have time for these issues!  I'm actually surprised with all the issues relating to Win10 and Office 2016/365 that we haven't heard of any class action lawsuits.