Jet Database and Access: Unrecognized Database Format

A Jet Database Engine serves as the underlying component of a database and all the information is stored on it in the networked scenario. Any wrong thing happened to it, can lead to the corruption of database and in most of the cases where data corrupted is of much importance, needs to be repaired. Any corruption in Jet database engine lead to following two common errors:

• The Microsoft Jet database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time.
• Unrecognized database format 'databasename.mdb'

In jet database engine first error message may displayed when the long value column has bad data stored in it. The page in which the row is stored differs from the one in which the long value is stored. “Unrecognized database format” error in jet database engine may come when Jet Database Engine improperly shuts down while the process of writing down to the disk that cause corruption in jet database engine as well as database file. This error mainly comes in access 2000 and access 2002 use the Jet 4.0 engine which creates Jet 4.0 format database files. Jet 3.5 components do not recognize such a format. Also due to misplacement of an index on the MSysObjects table, an error message is encountered that announces

To fix this problem you should install Latest Microsoft Jet database engine hotfix pack and use compact and repair utility provided by it. You can workaround with this installing Visual Studio Service Pack 4 or later. For ADO (or the ADO Data Control), use the Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 provider. But sometime data is critically damaged and we can’t repair it using these utility. In this situation we need powerful access repair software which fixes every error that cause corruption and repair our important database.

Now you can google for access recovery software easily but we don’t know which software will provide full repair on our database file. In these circumstances I can suggest you power full Access or .mdb repair software which is Stellar Phoenix Access Recovery Utility. Its main feature it works on every version of Microsoft access including Access 97, 2000, 2002/ XP, 2003 and 2007 and perform thorough scan for repairing database file. Demo version of this software shows you repaired database.