Where is the mdw

[QB]

I am trying to help out someone with a access 2003 db.

Previously designed/setup by someone else. Long story short. If you double
click on the front-end it open the db with the standard username prompt
initiated by the uls but I am open the front-end directly )not using a
shortcut that specifies the mdw location?

Now if I copy the db to another machine, I have to use a shortcut and
specify the mdw location.

What has the previous developer done at installtion on the other machine so
that you do not have to specify the mdw location. Is there a way to setup a
default mdw? If so How is it done? How can it be changes?

Thank you

QB

 

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:21:02 -0700, QB <[email protected]>
wrote:

What probably happened is that on Machine1 (you confusingly refer to
two machines as "other machine") someone used wrkgadm.exe to make the
custom .mdw file the default one. Therefore no /wrkgrp command line
switch would be needed. The disadvantage of this approach is that any
database would use this mdw, even if you just wanted to open an
unsecured sample database.
On Machine2 this did not happen, so you need /wrkgrp to tell Access
where this file is. This is the more standard solution.

-Tom.
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[QB]

Thank you for taking the time to help!

1. How can I find out what the default mdw is for the machine? To confirm
your theory (wish I believe to be right).
2. How can I set it back to the default mdw so I can use the shortcut method
and allow other db to open without this security hassel?

QB

 

[Tom van Stiphout]

Run wrkgadm.exe.

Find all occurrences of system.mdw. I believe Access typically
installs the default one in c:\windows\system32

-Tom.
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

System.mdw is normally installed at:

C:\Windows\System32\System.mdw

 

[David W. Fenton]

System.mdw is normally installed at:

C:\Windows\System32\System.mdw

This is really outdated information. Since Office 2000, it's been
either in the Office programs folder, or in the user profile's
AppData folder for Office.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

I just checked 3 machines. I do have multiple versions of Office on all my
machines.

The 2 XP machines are in:

C:\Windows\System32\System.mdw

The Windows 7 machine:

in the User folder

None are in the program folder. I would have expected Windows 7 to be there
because of security concerns for all system files. I might also point out
that I generally don't put my systemroot on machines that face outward, on
the C: drive, so my use of C:\ above is not exactly accurate on my
production machine.

 

[Joan Wild]

It depends on the versions of Office/Windows;the default locations:

Access 97 C:\Windows\system(32)\ folder (on XP; don't have it on Vista)
Access 2000 C:\Program Files\Common Files\System folder
Access 2002 users\AppData\Microsoft\Access folder or equivalent
Access 2003 - same as 2002
Access 2007 - same as 2002
Access 2010 - likely the same again.

I would bet the system.mdw you have in windows\system32 is the 97
version. That was the last one to put it there.

Joan Wild

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Most of my machines do have Access 97 on them. The one Windows 7 machine had
2003 and 2007. What is interesting is that there aren't multiple copies of
the system.mdw, even though there are multiple versions of Access.

 

[David W. Fenton]

What is interesting is that there aren't multiple copies of
the system.mdw, even though there are multiple versions of Access.

How did you determine that?

 

[David W. Fenton]

What is interesting is that there aren't multiple copies of
the system.mdw, even though there are multiple versions of Access.

I just did some checking on a fresh Windows 7 installation on which
I installed A2003 only yesterday. There are a number of issues doing
file searches on Win7 (and, I assume, on Vista) because of the way
the file search functions skip over hidden and system directories.

Indeed, despite my telling Windows in Folder Options to show hidden
and system files, it doesn't do so in many cases. I had to tweak a
whole host of settings to get it visible -- under
%UserProfile\AppData\Roaming, the Microsoft folder was originally
hidden and did not show up either in Explorer or in a command prompt
DIR command (unless I use the /a SH switches).

This is quite frustrating, in fact, as it makes it really hard for
an actual administrator to tell what's on the PC when the system is
hiding things from you (despite your having told it to show you
everything).

In any event, what I found out was that on this relatively virgin
system (wiped hard drive with Win7 installed 3/5/2010 and A2003
installed 3/19), there were system.mdw files in these folders:

%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Access\
C:\Programs Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\1033\

Yet, none of the Win7 search functions would find either of these,
so I suggest, Arvin, that you do some more searching manually. I
found these two by searching for MDW in the registry.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

How did you determine that?

Did a system wide search for:

system.mdw

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

I use FileFinder. It may miss some, but I don't think so since it seemingly
searches everything, and has found hidden files in the past.

 

[David W. Fenton]

Did a system wide search for:

system.mdw

On Vista/Win7, this won't necessarily produce correct results, no
matter what your search settings are. I couldn't find either of the
workgroup files on my Win7 box using the search tool.

On earlier versions of Windows, you have to show hidden and system
files to get those results.

 

[David W. Fenton]

I use FileFinder. It may miss some, but I don't think so since it
seemingly searches everything, and has found hidden files in the
past.

Check your registry for system.mdw and then see if the files are
where it says they are.

 

[Joan Wild]

I did my testing in virtual machines. Are you certain that there aren't
multiple copies of system.mdw? I found system.mdw and system1.mdw in
the users\appdata\... folder - one from 2002 and one from 2003.

Joan Wild

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

1 of my machines had system1.mdw on it, but it was in a project directory.
That directory on my machines only has files and data, so I assumed that it
was a backup for something. I have lots of .mdw files, but they are all for
secured databases.

 

[Joan Wild]

It's a mystery, then. Prhaps both 2002 and 2003 are using the same
system.mdw.

Joan Wild

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

What is a bigger mystery then is that my main production machine has both
Office 97 and Office 2003, but the system.mdw is located in the
C:\Windows\System32\ directory. And a registry search for SystemDB finds it
that directory under both 8.0 (Access 97) and 11.0 (Access 2003).

All I can think of is that the search engine may have missed another 1
somewhere, but why would the registry search turn up confirmation?
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.accessmvp.com
http://www.mvps.org/access

 

[Joan Wild]

I don't know, but 2003 does not put it there by default.

2003 can use the 97 system.mdw, so is it possible that you secured
something in 2003, and then reset your default workgroup to the one in
windows\system32 folder (I could see this easily happening since that is
the familiar location to you).

Joan Wild