Is it possible to start up a database automatically without the user having to enter password and username on startup?
I do not have a .mdw file so don’t know how it can be done without this file.
Any help would be appreciated.
Justin.
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Home » Forums » AskWoody support » Productivity software by function » MS Access and database help » Remove username and password screen (2000)
You always have an .mdw file; if you haven’t set a specific one, you are using the default System.mdw.
You will be prompted to enter a username and password if a password has been set for the default Admin account. If you clear the password for Admin, you won’t be prompted any more. Or you can remove or rename your System.mdw; Access will automatically create a new unsecured one.
To clear the password for Admin:
Select Tools | Security | User and Group Accounts.
Make sure that Admin is selected in the Users tab.
Click ‘Clear Password’.
Click OK.
You should login as Admin. If you don’t know the password for Admin, your best bet is to remove or rename the .mdw file. Since you stated that you don’t have one, you are probably using the default System.mdw. I don’t have Access 2000 myself, but I think System.mdw is located in C:Program FilesCommon FilesSystem. Quit Access, locate system.mdw and rename it to System.old, for example.
OK, that makes it a lot clearer. This means that the shortcut specifies a secured .mdw to be used. You can avoid the prompt by opening the database directly instead of via the shortcut, or you can modify the shortcut as follows:
– Right-click the shortcut.
– Select Properties from the popup menu.
– Activate the Shortcut tab of the Properties window (if necessary, most probably it is already the active tab).
– Look at the Target of the shortcut. It probably looks like this (with other names, of course):
“C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOfficeMSAccess.exe” “C:DatabasesMyDatabase.mdb” /wrkgrp “C:DatabasesSecured.mdw”
– The last part, starting with /wrkgrp specifies the workgroup.
– Delete that part (until the end of the line).
– Click OK.
Try opening the database via the shortcut now.
Try this then:
– Locate the Workgroup Administrator application Wrkgadm.exe. For the US version, it is in C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice1033, for the UK version the 1033 must probably be replaced by 2057.
– Start this application.
– Click Create… to create and join a new .mdw file.
– Specify information, or leave it as suggested, then click OK.
– You can modify the name and location, if you like, then click OK again.
– You should now be member of a new unsecured .mdw
– Open the database.
– You may find that you have only limited permissions in the database.
You would have to remove all user-level security from the database. But I assume that the person who designed this database secured it for a reason. So it is probably not desirable to do remove security. You’d better use the Workgroup Administrator again and rejoin the secured .mdw file, and live with the username/password prompt.
It is possible to specify the user name and password in a shortcut, so the user never sees the prompt but is logged in as the specified user. To do so use the /user and /pwd options. Search Help for the string “command line” for more details – the page you want is “Startup command-line options”
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