Thursday, October 14, 2010

How to recover Access database using an Access database recovery software

MS Access is one of the most popular database management systems, which enables you to create and manage records, and is developed and marketed by Microsoft. Access is easily available, its simple to use, scalable, and has got lots of useful support from forums all over the world. Having said that, sometimes the database tables can get corrupt because of different reasons such as improper shutdowns, virus infections, hardware corruption, database header corruption, etc. In such cases, you should perform appropriate corrective measures to recover Access file. In case, the Access database is not repaired then you should use a third-party Access database repair tool.

Let us consider a situation in which when you open an MS Access 2000 but it fails to open. The following error message is displayed in this case:
“The database 'filename.mdb' needs to be repaired or isn't a database file.
You or another user may have unexpectedly quit Microsoft Office Access while a Microsoft Office Access database was open.

Do you want Microsoft Office Access to attempt to repair the database?”
Clicking on 'Yes' will display the following error message:
“Unrecognized database format 'filename.mdb'”
When you click OK to close the message box, the following error message is displayed:

“The database 'filename.mdb' can't be repaired or isn't a Microsoft Office Access database file.”

Cause:
The most prominent reason of this erroneous situation is that the Access database is corrupt.
The MS Access Jet database engine is capable of identifying the basic structures and table definitions of the databases. When it encounters corruption in the definitions of the table and tries to repair them itself. But, when it is unable to repair the corruption issues then it displays the last error message and exits abruptly.

Resolution:
To overcome this problem, you would need to use the in-built Compact and Repair feature of MS Access. This utility is able to scan the database and repairs the errors, if it finds any, thereby making the database consistent.

However, if the database remains corrupt and inaccessible then it is a vulnerable situation as the valuable records are insecure. To ward off such problems, I would suggest you to use a third-party Access database recovery software. These database recovery tools are able to repair any type of corruption without causing any further damages.

The most efficient utility that recovers Access databases from all kinds of corruption is Stellar Phoenix Access Recovery. Able to perform MDB recovery in databases created in MS Access 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000, this Access repair software restores tables, views, records, etc. In addition, this tool is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.

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