pkinaus
asked on
vb access 97 suddenly very slow over network
gday,
I have a little application written in VB6 with an access 97 backend. The application is run from a drive shared on a windows 2000 server. There are about 10 desktops all running xp. Both the server and the desktops have the latest sp's.
A couple of days ago the application started to run very slowly. I have made no changes to it for months. I can browse files on the server from a desktop without any problems, accessing word and excel files stored on the server seems to work fine. When I run the application from a local drive it runs fine.
Opening the access database itself seems to be very slow too. The database is not too big, only about 80mb. I'm not really a network person have run out of ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated. The people who use this application are starting to become a little twitchy and when pushed too far they are capable of extreme violence.
Cheers
Paul
I have a little application written in VB6 with an access 97 backend. The application is run from a drive shared on a windows 2000 server. There are about 10 desktops all running xp. Both the server and the desktops have the latest sp's.
A couple of days ago the application started to run very slowly. I have made no changes to it for months. I can browse files on the server from a desktop without any problems, accessing word and excel files stored on the server seems to work fine. When I run the application from a local drive it runs fine.
Opening the access database itself seems to be very slow too. The database is not too big, only about 80mb. I'm not really a network person have run out of ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated. The people who use this application are starting to become a little twitchy and when pushed too far they are capable of extreme violence.
Cheers
Paul
Try to Compact database
Tools -> Database Utilities -> Compact And Repair Database
ASKER
Have already tried to Compact the database.
Your server is just providing a file sharing role. 10 users accessing a 80MB database file over the network can expose lots of issues.
Hope there is no issue with free space / fragmentation on the server.
What else could cause this?
(1) Lots of new records inserted into the database
this could affect your query optimisation, and as at (4) below, since all the data is transmitted over the network this could be become very apparent quite suddenly. It is possible that a query will not be optimised as previously. The database being quicker locally would be quite normal. But this would be especially true if the queries were not properly optimised by having the right indexes.
(2) So check the indexes and make sure that they are right for your queries.
(3) Indexes have been corrupted
I have seen ms access databases lose indexes. You could try to create a new database and then import all the objects from the old database. This can both solve and expose issues in the original database.
(4) Faulty network
All data in queries is transmitted over the network. MS Access databases used like this will expose network problems more than other types of file sharing - like opening a spreadsheet or a document
(5) In some cases I found having a local database with linked tables to the server database helped with performance.
All these are issues I have personally seen that can cause your type of problem.
Hope they are of assistance.
Hope there is no issue with free space / fragmentation on the server.
What else could cause this?
(1) Lots of new records inserted into the database
this could affect your query optimisation, and as at (4) below, since all the data is transmitted over the network this could be become very apparent quite suddenly. It is possible that a query will not be optimised as previously. The database being quicker locally would be quite normal. But this would be especially true if the queries were not properly optimised by having the right indexes.
(2) So check the indexes and make sure that they are right for your queries.
(3) Indexes have been corrupted
I have seen ms access databases lose indexes. You could try to create a new database and then import all the objects from the old database. This can both solve and expose issues in the original database.
(4) Faulty network
All data in queries is transmitted over the network. MS Access databases used like this will expose network problems more than other types of file sharing - like opening a spreadsheet or a document
(5) In some cases I found having a local database with linked tables to the server database helped with performance.
All these are issues I have personally seen that can cause your type of problem.
Hope they are of assistance.
ASKER
Thanks for the suggestions kellysys,
It turned out to be the anivirus software we are (were) using. We have been running it for a while with no problems, but for some reason it starting to take a dislike to our application. I removed it and the speed went back up to normal again.
Cheers for your post though, I'm sure your suggestions will be of help some time in the future.
It turned out to be the anivirus software we are (were) using. We have been running it for a while with no problems, but for some reason it starting to take a dislike to our application. I removed it and the speed went back up to normal again.
Cheers for your post though, I'm sure your suggestions will be of help some time in the future.
And all that advise for no points !!
Glad you found the problem. Antivirus can be a nightmare sometimes.
Glad you found the problem. Antivirus can be a nightmare sometimes.
G'day pkinaus mate!
I see I am late....
I have had exactly the same issue.
Rather than remove the AntiVirus software, check its settings. In most of them you can remove .mdb from the list of extensions checked. .mdb extensions are considered dangerous as somebody might have written harmful code within them.
Since I only use the .mdb files from VB and not from Access itself, and never use .mdb files written by others, it is quite safe to remove from the AV list.
Dabas
I see I am late....
I have had exactly the same issue.
Rather than remove the AntiVirus software, check its settings. In most of them you can remove .mdb from the list of extensions checked. .mdb extensions are considered dangerous as somebody might have written harmful code within them.
Since I only use the .mdb files from VB and not from Access itself, and never use .mdb files written by others, it is quite safe to remove from the AV list.
Dabas
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