Different Versions Of Access XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mickey G
  • Start date Start date
M

Mickey G

My company has Access XP installed in our shop which we
use to develop custom applications for our customers. We
have three different "sources" of Access XP. One is from
Office Proffessional. One is from Office Developer. And
the latest install we have is from the Microsoft Action
Pack subscription.

We are finding that Access XP from the Action Pack is not
the same as Access XP from the other two sources. All
installations are running basically the same PC's with all
Service Releases installed and all updates applied
everywhere.

But the same VBA code runs differently depending on which
installation we use. I have talked to MS about this and
they so far have not provided me any advice, information
or help with this. But it is a major problem for us.
Just curious if anyone else has had this experience and if
so what they did about it?
 
Mickey, the first thing to check is that you have the same references. From
any code window, choose References on the Tools menu. More info:
http://allenbrowne.com/ser-38.html

If that is not the issue, could you give an example of something that is not
working?
 
Allen, One of the first things we did was to verify the
library references. All are the same on each PC. We have
found that the PC's with the Action Pack have a newer
version of MSJET40.DLL. These are the ones that do not
work. We are now in the process of narrowing it down a
little more by "upgrading" one of the PC's that does work
to the newer version and see what changes.

An example of the problem is an unbound form that has a
listbox with approximately 10 columns displayed. Each row
represents a payment due. A user selects a row, enters
more data such as amounts, notes, etc in other fields and
hits an Update button. The update button then validates
the data entered and starts updating tables in the code.
One option causes a SQL statement to execute adding user
entered notes (if any entered) to a table. If none are
entered and the SQL statement does not execute, the
remaining code executes perfectly and everything processes
as expected. If the SQL statement is executed (and it
works fine and the notes are updated) some columns (not
all) in the listbox are cleared for every row (not just
the row selected). The cleared columns for the row
selected then cause the subsequent use of the data from
the listbox to be invalid. There is no connection at all
between the note table being updated and the data in the
listbox.

We can move the code that updates the notes to the bottom
of the routine and let the listbox data process first and
everything works on all versions. But where else in our
application will this same thing bite us again? This only
occurs on PC's installed with the Action Pack version of
Access XP which is not a production problem as we only use
these installations for development of the applications.
All production users have the XP Pro version installed
which works fine. But it sure does cause a lot of wasted
time debugging code during development.
 
Okay: sounds like you are on the right track, if you have verified that
there is a difference in behaviour depending on the version of Jet.

If you are able to confirm that the problem is caused by JET4 SP7, I would
encourage you to talk to Microsoft PSS about it.
 
Today we setup a spare PC with nothing but Win XP Pro and
Office XP from the Action Pack. We applied no Service
Packs or patches to either of these. The database
executes just fine in this environment. We then applied
just the Jet4 SP7 and retested the database. Again it
worked just fine which leads me to believe it is not the
Jet4 SP causing the problem and it may not be Access from
the Action Pack. It may be some Windows or Office update
or combination causing the problem. One thing we noticed
is that PC's that had a previous Office version on them
prior to Office XP being installed all seem to work as
expected even if all Win XP and Office XP updates have
been applied.

Narrowing it down one Windows and/or Office update at a
time and retesting after each update may take forever
which I cannot afford do do. Hopefully MS can help with
this.
 
Back
Top