YOur profile says Access 2007 so I am making assumptions here.
Maybe focusing on the ODBC connection first would be easier. Maybe you can try an older version of access with the existing setup to try and duplicate the symptom. As I look at your PHP I notice that you are using (what looks to me as) an older driver for the connection
Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0
Newer Access uses the Ace engine but I believe it still depends on the Jet engine for ODBC connections. Maybe there is a reference you can make in the DB to Jet engine. The whole "using Newer Access to create MDB file" is throwing me for a loop.
Trusted locations started with Access 2007. I do not believe Trusted Locations is relevant using Access 2007 to open older file formats like MDB. You can adjust Macro settings using "Sandbox" mode. Now that I type this, I believe "Sandbox" mode is only available if the machine has Office 2003 (In other words, no way to create a registry Key where the necessary root key does not exist) installed so..... Maybe you can bypass security warnings on mdb files using Trusted Locations?????? (you are able to open DB from desktop machine with no security warnings???
Here is a link that may help or may make things worse
https://www.accessforums.net/securit...tml#post210517