Jet Data Access Problem - Client Has Access 97

Hello,

I have an application which needs to access for read an Access database, using the Jet provider.

On my development machine, and two other machines running Office 2003, everything works fine.

The problem computer is Windows XP SP2, with Access 97 installed. I have run the MDAC_TYP.EXE for version 2.8, which installed. I also ran the Jet SP8 update which did not install, stating Windows XP already had this update.

On this machine, the program throws and exception when it hits DataCon.Open.

Is there an inherent problem running a VB.NET application utilizing Jet on a machine configured this way?

Is there an update I've missed or some file I can manually update?

Thanks in advance.

No problems that I'm aware of. Check your connectionstring.

Show the connection string.

Is the MDB file on the client's machine?

What is the error?

Thankyou for both of your responses.

The connectionstring is:

"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=\somepath\mydb.mdb;Jet OLEDB:System Database=custom.mdw;User Id=customuser;Password=custompass;"

I have futher isolated the error. It appears the exception is being thrown by my code rather than database.open. No data is being returned by the dataset.fill, or an empty dataset is being returned. My code just wansn't handling that case.

So, the actual problem is on a machine running WinXP + Access 97, an empty dataset is returned, where on my development machine, and any other like it (WinXP + Office 2003), the dataset gets populated. For the same query on the same database.

Both mydb.mdb and custom.mdw are local files on the clients machine. The error still occurs if they are accessed over the network.

Any ideas?

Everything points towards MDAC_TYP.EXE, IMEO. The issue of having Access 97 shouldn't matter, I believe. As long as you've included the MDB file from your dev machine (which would be the 2003 version), there shouldn't be a problem.

Change the Data Source to the UNC of your Office 2K3 machine, access the MDB there. (opposite of what you did earlier)

Hmmm.... that's an interesting experiment, I will give it a go.

Unfortunatly, it won't do for deployment, where the mdb will be on the clients machine. What's more, the mdb is an Access 97 version. However, I am also using this unconverted version on my development machine and it does work.

Is there a way to determine the status of MDAC in a system? Perhaps something screwy has been done before I got to the machine. How can I uninstall and reinstall or even force a reinstall of MDAC? Which version would be best for this? 2.8?

Would it be better to use Jet 3.5 in this instance? Are there any pitfalls?

Thanks in advance.

Aah, I see. The MDB is going to be machine specific. In that case, yes, you'll have to change the connection string for Access 97.

I believe the version is 3.51

Thankyou :)