Possible Fix for "Unable to create MDE" Error and "Unexpected Error 40230" in Access 2002

[Mark]

Hi

I thought I'd post this in the hope my experience may help others avoid the
problems (and significant amount of time) trying to recover from the above
errors when trying to create an MDE in Access 2002. As I haven't seen this
solution posted anywhere before I hope Microsoft might also take a look to
see if it might be a common cause.

I'll give you the answer first... move the mdb to a local disk on your PC,
C&R it, compile it and create an MDE on the local disk. That's it.

*************

Now I guess many developers will already be working locally in which case
this may be of no help but for me this was the solution after *everything
else* failed.

Faced with having to reconstruct a huge and complex database I spent many
hours trying to compare the failing db with earlier "good" builds to
determine which objects were causing the problems.

With each one I progressively deleted more and more objects in the mdb until
it would create an mde. Knowing the last group of deleted objects then
allowed the creation of an mde suggested the problem object was in that
group just deleted. But starting over with an original mdb and just deleting
that group of objects again DID NOT then fix the problem.

Stepping back through recent similar builds showed each build behaving
differently when I tried to repair them. One would not create an MDE with
virtually every object deleted. I came to the conclusion the problem (on
this occasion at least) was not necessarily in my objects at all but with
Access's systyem objects.

I moved the mdb from the network drive to a local drive to speed up testing
only to find the problems went away!!! Very pleased, obviously!, but
confused too. So then I did a C&R on the mdb and moved it back to the
network... guess what?... now it works fine on the network drive also.

So... although I have a very large db (30 linked tables, 700+ queries, 80
forms, 400 reports and LOTS of code) it doesn't appear this overall number
of objects is the direct cause.

HTH
Mark Potter

My network is peer to peer 100mbit. Dev PC is WinXP SP1. Network drive is on
my WinXP SP2 "server".

 

[Albert D.Kallal]

The fact that after all was said and done..you find that you can compile the
code, and build the mde when it is on the shared folder.

It is possible that some references was still stray. (remember, you can
actually make references to other mde files..and the LOCAL directory is
searched first for these references).

I also would have consider creating a blank mdb file..and importing
everything. This would reduce/eliminate references issues, and also fixes
forms of corruption.

So, there are in some cases some different behaviors here. It is not really
clear if that actually copying the mdb to your local machine fixed a
reference, and allowed the code to compile, or some other issue.

Of course...as always..you need to do a debug->compile in your code and make
sure no code errors occur BEFORE you attempt to make the mde-xecutable file.

However, since the application did allow you to build the mde when working
on the local machine, then something must have changed.

In addition to the above, it needs pointing out that you MUST run the front
end part of the application on each pc..or you will experience general
problems if this is to be used by more then one person. This should come as
NO surprise here, and is standard fair for any developer.

I explain why you split here.....

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/split/index.htm

 

[Mark]

Following my post yesterday Access froze whilst I was debugging some code
and would not subsequently create an MDE file again with multiple Error
40230 messages.

Just to clarify, this is a front end db and the code compiles ok without any
problems even though the MDE creation fails.

The resolution this time required a slightly different sequence;

Copy FE db to a local disk
Decompile
*Did NOT then re-compile the code*
Successfully made an MDE
Compiled code (in FE)
C&R FE db
Moved FE back to network drive
Then FE created MDE OK there too

*I first tried compiling the code straight after a decompile but this didn't
fix the problem.

The above isn't very scientific but did allow me to recover my db (again) so
might help others also.

Whilst importing everything into another mdb is an option it is actually a
*very last resort* for me as the db is huge with complex security - no small
task.

Regards
Mark Potter