Access Database is getting corrupt again and again

I am the owner of a company that sells a software product based on Microsoft Access. We have been in business for 20 years and the current state of the support or attention to these problems from Microsoft is so alarming I am truly shocked. You just have to read some of these posts. The lost time and money, for developers and customers, if it could be added up would be astounding. On the other hand, I am glad Shane is at least listening and contributing which means some others at Microsoft are also. I just wish it translated into action and solutions in a timely manner.

I went through a few months of nightmares last year with the database corruption issue. Disable Leasing on the server if you can (not needed on clients).  Consider creating a separate share for the backend database and disable leasing on that share only (via Powershell) which will minimize the impact to the rest of the server. I have not been able to test that myself, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Can Microsoft at least tell us if this should work? If so, it isolates the change to just one share not the whole server.

Getting IT people to disable leasing on their server is a bit challenging and apparently has some unwanted side efftects. The ONLY thing I think that has saved my business so far is the change that someone suggested early on with this problem (look back through the thread). And that is the registry change below to EVERY Windows 10 PC that uses the back end database.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters]

"FileInfoCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000

"FileNotFoundCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000

"DirectoryCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000

I have incorporated this into our setup program that installs our program. I rarely get inconsistent database problems. If you do, you need to repair the database, not just make this change. Up until implementing this change I thought I was going to go out of business. Can Microsoft please tell us if this is a reasonable work around and endorse it?

If people are sayng that this change no longer works, I have yet to experience that (and hope I never will). Anyway, that is my two cents. Especially for those that are still dealing with this on a daily basis.

Mark Mauger

Quantum Software Solutions Inc.

I don't think the DisableLeasing fix is being referred to in that post as not working.

The way I read it is that other fixes that have been trialed since have not delivered the desired outcome.

Hi Wayne,

The biggest problem with this issue is that we still don't have a way to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment.

Nobody has been able to give us a situation where it is "Do these steps", then "Database is corrupted".

We believe we understand the change in Windows that caused the increase in corrupted databases, and have been testing changes that we hope will alleviate the problem in production.  Initially, that will be for O365 Monthly Channel users.  It will not necessarily address all the issues, particularly in environments with users using different versions (if someone using Access 2016 corrupts the database, it may still be reported as corrupt when it is opened in Access365).

I am not suggesting this as a workaround, because I know it isn't a trivial transformation, but if this is causing you significant issues, it is worth considering using Access for the front end, and storing data in  SQL Server.

We will share more information when we have it, but I don't want to make promises we can't deliver on.