Corrupt Record (WIN2000-Acc97)

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I have seen this asked before on many boards (even I have asked once or twice !!) but
still have not seen an answer that would solve the problem.
The problem is :
Every so often a record appears in the database with #error in every field.
OK – We all know this means the record is “corrupt.
When I open the table and try to higlight the row, “Not a Valid Bookmark” messagebox pops
up. I click OK and it appears again, and again, and again and again.(4 times altogether)

So – what I’d like to know is :
What corrupts an individual record (there are no memo fields)
Why the msgbox “Not a valid bookmark”
It could be a year until it happens again !!

Luckily, between Repair/Compact and sometimes the JetComp utility, I have been
able to recover the db without the ‘bad’ record.

Is there something generic happening here? Like I said, I have seen this asked by many
folks, but no real concrete solution. (With Access though, I wouldn’t be surprised if there
was no concrete solution !!)

Thanks for reading this post – I hope someone can assist !

Michael

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These kind of things usually happen because of a crash in either the local area network, the hardware, Windows, or Access. I’ve seen cases where the corruption was bad enough that when you tried to view the corrupt record, Access would actually crash. Tables with memo fields seem particularly prone to corruption, partly because memo fields are normally stored in a different page of the database than the rest of the record. But even without memo fields, a crash can cause record corruption. You don’t indicate whether you are in a multi-user application, but presuming that is the case, Access has to move an entire page from the server to the local PC to display the data or whatever, and then it has to send it back if the data has been updated. Corruption happens when the write-back part of the process breaks for some reason. BTW, you will find Access 2000 somewhat less prone to crashing or corrupting, which is a very good argument for upgrading. But if you really want reliable data storage over the long haul, you should consider one of the serious server based databases such as SQL Server or Oracle.

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Thanks Wendell. Yes it is multi-user on a LAN – fe/be.
I know a lot of times a message pops up which doesn’t really express the true nature of the
problem, so what does the Not Valid Bookmark have to do with a corrupt record?

Thank you for your descriptive reply. I believe after reading it, the problem here is
probably the server.

Thanks again!!
Michael

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I did a bit of checking on this and it appears the message you are getting is an old Access/Jet message with message number 3159 that was displayed when a corrupt record was encountered in a database. Bookmarks in Access (and most databases) are used to indicate where you are in a recordset, and in this case there should be one and isn’t. It also appears that some fixes to reduce the frequency of this error were released as service packs, and ultimately a new version of Jet known as 3.51 was released which eliminated the message completely as best I can tell. Which raises a question:

What version of Jet are you using, and what service packs have been applied to Access 97?

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“What version of Jet are you using, and what service packs have been applied to Access 97?”

Good questions !!

Let me ask my Network guys and get back to you.
Where would I find out which version of Jet I have?

Michael

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Hi Michael

Did you ever get a resolution to your problem?

John

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