How to troubleshoot a .lck file issue to pinpoint the user

[movertom]

I help run the web sites at work, and I have a situation that I would appreciate advice on concerning our Access database that stores our data. Throughout the day we have leads posting to our Access 2010 database on our Internet sever. All too often I am observing that the temporary .ldb file persists, and as a consequence, I start receiving complaints that workers accessing the database through a CRM are unable to update their work. In response I have had to restart the web service in order to eliminate the lock file. I have read that the .ldb file can be opened with a hex editor upon, for the purposes of determining what user might have been accessing the database at that time. However, when I follow that process the only info present within the file is the user Admin and the Server Name. This is obviously of no value for troubleshooting. Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide on this issue.

[ItsMe]

I am not aware of a way to use an lck file against an Access file. I would expect the lock file to be an laccdb or ldb.

Are you sure the backend that resides on the web server is an Access file?

[movertom]

I apologize. In my haste I made an error. The temporary file extension is .ldb.

[John_G]

This will depend on what OS your network uses, but if you are in a normal Windows environment, you can probably go into the directory where the .ldb file is, and determine the owner (from the OS viewpoint, not MS Access) of the .ldb file.

In Windows Explorer (not to be confused with IE), this is View - Choose Details..., and then select Owner from the list. The Owner of a file is the user who originally created it, in your case the last user who created that .ldb file.

What you can then do is check the access privileges for that user in the directory - it could be they do not have delete permission, so the file persists.

[ItsMe]

To add to John's comment. Consider how the user is connecting to the host from the client. When data is posted, you do not want to keep a persistent connection. If a connection is interrupted, it will orphan the ldb.

[movertom]

Thank you!