My VB program connects to an Access database that is located on a network drive.

This connection has worked seamlessly for months, and all of a sudden today it has derailed. I think it has something to do with the fact that I recently installed an old VB program on my computer. This recently installed program has nothing to do with the program I wrote, they are two entirely different things. Having said that though, I'd say the MDAC or something got all screwed up when I installed this older software earlier in the week.

Anyways, here's the problem.

I get an error in VB saying "Provider cannot be found. It may not be properly installed". This error occurs on the following line:

VB Code:
  1. PhysDat.Open "Provide=MSDASQL.1;Persist Security Info=False;Data Source = PhysDat"

My first reaction was to "Google" this error. The only real solution I found was to change the provider to JET 4.0, which I tried, but to no ovail.

So I re-installed MDAC - Still not working.

To see exactly what was going on I created a Data Environment in my VB Project and tried to use the Connection Wizard to connect to the database.

This wizard works great when I try to connect to files on my local machine, but as soon as I try to connect to the file on the network drive, I get this...


"Microsoft Data Link Error - Test Connection failed because of an error initializing provider. Cannot start your application. The workgroup information file is missing or opened exclusively by another user."


Oh, and also....this error occurs when I try to access any of the 5 Access databases on the network drive, so it's not just the one I'm trying to access with my program.

Any ideas?