Access 2003 permissions problem

Question

I have an Access 2003 database running under Windows XP which, having worked perfectly for some years, now won't open.   If gives the following error message "You do not have the correct permissions to use <database name>.   Have you system administrator or the person how created this object establish the appropriate permissions for you".   I am both the administrator and the creator of the database and I can't open the database to fix the permissions.   How do I get into the database to resolve the problem?

Answer 1

Guys,

Thanks a lot for the advice.   I haven't made any changes to the security for the database and another database on the same PC works perfectly well.   I'm the only user of the system and have no other machine on which to generate a virgin system.mdw file, so I suspect that the only option open to me is to regenerate the database from recently produced printouts.   I've tried to export data from the affected database into both Excel and Open Office - neither of which work.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Noel

Answer 2

I'm not sure what a split database is or where to find the front end.   I'm in the habit of backing up after each session and I assume that the problem must have occurred during a session because when I subsequently found the problem the backup produced the same error.

Splitting is a requirement for any database that is used by multiple people or used by someone other than the creator. It takes the tables and splits them into the back end and the front end is stored on the local drive.

It certainly sounds, like somehow ULS was applied to this database. I would rename any system.mdw files you find and replace them with a "virgin" file as Tom recommended.

Answer 3

Sorry to hear that. This is why good backups often include the grandfather - father - son scheme where for example we make separate backups every day of the week, then we keep one weekly backup for 4 weeks, then we keep one monthly backup for 6 months.

The error message points to the application of Access Workgroup Security, sometimes called ULS = User-level security. Are you SURE you didn't "experiment" with that? Are you sure you did not touch the system.mdw file, and that you did not run wrkgadm.exe - the workgroup security administrator program?

One long shot to try is this. Make copious notes and backups before you do it. Find all occurrences of system.mdw on your machine (hopefully only one) and temporarily replace it with one from a virgin machine.

Answer 4

Hi Tom,

You're right.  The exact message was ""You do not have the necessary permissions to use the<database name> object.   Have you system administrator or the person how created this object establish the appropriate permissions for you".   I apologise for the error.

I'm not sure what a split database is or where to find the front end.   I'm in the habit of backing up after each session and I assume that the problem must have occurred during a session because when I subsequently found the problem the backup produced the same error.

I'm hoping that I can retrieve the information without having to rebuild the database.

Regards,

Noel

Answer 5

I doubt that was the exact message. Please report error messages verbatim.

If this is a split database per best practices, you can simply replace the front-end.

Otherwise you may have to restore a backup.