Form stopped working after repeated successful tests.Corruption?

Question

I have a form with about 45 fields plus a few typical  command buttons (Save, Exit, Add Another) plus three command buttons, each of which calls another dialog form.  All these were working and I even made a video of them for the user, but suddenly the form gives me very basic error messages like "The expression On Load you entered as the event property setting produced the following error: User-defined type not defined."  This message also appears with the expression On Current.  I commented out the content of those events, but the errors persisted on those until I closed the form entirely.  One of the command buttons calls a form at the beginning of the process to load a selection form.  Now that gives me the same kind of message referencing the On Click expression.

Another peculiarity is that in that form I seem to have lost the me.  list capacity.

The one thing I did to the code after the last successful test was to add some code to verify that an index key field's entry was   unique.  I disabled that code when I began having the problems described.

I have created another form and copied the fields and command buttons to it, but I get the same result.

How can I address this problem?  All strategies are welcome!

Marj Weir

Answer 1

How can I address this problem?  All strategies are welcome!

Hi Marj,

Step through your code with the debugger.

In my long way using Access I have met many, many problems. And some were very severe: the application stopped, tried to find a solution to the problem, but failed to find one. So totally lost. With consequent debugging it was "only" a wrong place to close a form.

Until now I have never needed to de-compiled my programs, nor started all over again. So I believe that many of the problems that are reported in these threads could have been cured by thorough debugging instead of saying it is corruption.

My advise for all kind of problems: the debugger.

Imb.

Answer 2

Thanks for your prompt input.  I, too am a devoted debugger, but this problem stopped processing even before I got to a breakpoint set in in form_Load, Form_Current, etc.

I solved the problem by importing the form from the last backup which was fortunately the same day.  Now it's working again.

I'm going to close this even though I would appreciate others chiming in.

Marj Weir

Answer 3

You could probably have cured it without restoring from your backup by copying the form to the clipboard and pasting it under a new name.  If the new copy opens successfully you can then delete the original and rename the new one back to the original name.  I've found that this almost always does the trick.

Glad to see that you are backing up regularly.  Do you have more than one backup, though?  A backup can itself be corrupted.  I learned this lesson the hard way!  I now keep two local, and one online backups.

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Ken Sheridan, Stafford, England

Answer 4

As a result of a later debacle, I think this problem was caused by Windows 10 "memory leaks."  I was getting "out of memory" messages at random moments and things were behaving oddly when I'd save code.  Ultimately the database was not responding at all.  I have made the recommended changes to Windows 10 and have added a memory monitor to my system tray, so I can be aware of my usage as I work.

I seem to have no further problem.

My backup system failed over a month ago, but I didn't realize it.  That still has to be addressed.  I have a Seagate Backup Plus with 1 Tb.  It stops routinely at 5% of the backup completed.  Disk usage is only about half. The log just says that it stopped on an "unknown error."  Very helpful.  

What backup system(s) do you use/like?  Do they have decent customer support?

Thanks.

Marj Weir

Answer 5

What backup system(s) do you use/like?  Do they have decent customer support?

Hi Marj,

I use a very simple system. All Access development (for 80 applications) is done in one map, including a couple of submaps. This map is just copied very regularly to alternatively one of the two backup disks.

Imb.

Edit: I now realize that "map" is the Dutch word for "directory".

Answer 6

What backup system(s) do you use/like?

I don't use any proprietary back-up application, but do simple file copying.  I did use a well known product at one time, but on the one occasion when I had a need for a large scale restore I found that the back-up file was corrupted.

Provided you have a good folder structure and adopt a methodical strategy of prioritised regular copying it works fine, and I've never lost a thing since I abandoned the all singing and dancing proprietary software.

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Ken Sheridan, Stafford, England