Alex & Access

November 19, 2020

Another service to block VBA code

Filed under: Access, VBA — access @ 7:04 am

Got this from my friend, be aware of this CylancePROTECT Script Control !

Hi Everyone

I spent a frustrating five hours yesterday tracking down a problem on some (but not all) of one of my clients’ workstations, and I hope I might save some of you from a similar waste of time.

Attempts to open their Access application (an ACCDR) with the /runtime switch gave:
               Execution of this application has stopped due to a run-time error.
                The application can’t continue and will shut down.

Further investigation, running it as an ACCDB, showed that any attempt to touch the ErrEx class (Wayne Philips’ vbWatchdog) gave:
                Run-time error ‘453’:
               Can’t find DLL entry point VirtualAlloc in kernel32

This was from a call to VirtualAlloc from the Class_Initialize event procedure of ErrEx.

My initial thought was that a Microsoft update over the weekend had installed something that was interfering with vbWatchdog, so I was composing as email to Wayne when I thought to try some other calls to Kernel32 functions.  They all failed with Error 453, as did calls to User32 procedures.

I then spent considerable time uninstalling updates and reverting to restore points, without any success.  While googling for ideas, I found this:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56201309/need-to-fix-this-error-cant-find-dll-entry-point-getsysteminfo-in-kernel32
Note the final comment by the OP.

Sure enough, I checked and there was a service named “CylancePROTECT” running on the workstation I was looking at.

I called their IT “support” company and finally found somebody who knew that they were trialling new “security software” on some of their customers’ workstations.  I googled it, and it includes a “script control” feature which blocks certain functions in “scripts”, which apparently include VBA code:
https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/cylance/documents/pdf/pdf-feature-focus-protect-script-control.pdf

In this document, it recommends “that administrators initially enable CylancePROTECT Script Control in Alert Mode to monitor and observe all scripts running in their environment.”  Then later, “Once administrators have a good understanding of all scripts running in their environment, they can change their settings to block mode and only allow scripts to run out of specified folders.”  Of course, these idiots had not followed these recommendations.

Anyway, I hope this is useful knowledge to put in the toolbox if ever you are diagnosing Error 453.

Cheers,
Graham

March 21, 2019

AccessImagine

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 12:37 pm

AccessImagine is ActiveX control, which helps to insert images into DB – from file, webcam, clipboard or drag-n-drop, crop and display images, store outside database.

March 4, 2019

Access System Tables

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 9:00 am

64 different system tables were documented  and summarised the properties

Purpose of System Tables
How Access Stores Queries
Using multivalued fields..and why you really shouldn’t
How Access manages Relationships
Using Column History in Memo/Long Text fields
Remove deleted objects from MSysObjects

November 13, 2017

Happy birthday, Microsoft Access!

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 12:02 pm

25 years ago, November 13, 1992, Access 1.0 was relased, and almost the same time I started to work with it! Long life, Mr. Access!

Here some introductionary words from its father, Bill Gates:

https://youtu.be/evMilwVBHAQ?t=11m55s

March 28, 2017

Access Web Apps–the end? The end…

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 6:17 am

We no longer recommend Access Services for new apps. This feature will be retired from Office 365. We will stop creation of new Access-based apps in SharePoint Online starting June 2017 and shut down any remaining apps by April 2018.

January 20, 2017

SSE Setup

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 8:23 am

SSE Setup is a freeware Windows installation creator, looks interesting: works on most Windows OS, 32 and 64 bit, non-admin and UAC-friendly installs, etc. And of course – Easy Access database deployment!

November 9, 2016

MS Access Right-Click Context Menu Creator

Filed under: Access — access @ 11:58 am

Context Menu Creator – useful tool to create Windows Explorer file context menu like Compact, Decompile, Open Exclusively for desired Access file exnetsions.

WindowsExplorer_AccessDatabase_ContextMenu01[1]

June 15, 2016

Access WizHook library

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 10:21 am

As old links to WizHook – more undocumented functions are gone, posting here a new one: WizHook Overview.

Plus I saved copy here

May 11, 2016

Access SQL Editor

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 2:43 pm

Access SQL Editor – quite useful add-in for Microsoft Access (where we still have such a basic SQL editor, no changes since version 1,0!), allows you to save formatted SQL queries in a Microsoft Access (Jet/ACE) database, with syntax highlighting and comments.

Capture

April 26, 2016

Meet SQL Server 2016

Filed under: Uncategorized — access @ 9:18 am

SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate 3 was released recently, amoung other new features – temporal tables: a system-versioned table allows you to query updated and deleted data, while a normal table can only return the current data.

These are the most common use cases for temporal tables:

  • Audit. With temporal tables you can find out what values a specific entity has had over its entire lifetime.
  • Slowly changing dimensions. A system-versioned table exactly behaves like a dimension with type 2 changing behavior for all of its columns.
  • Repair record-level corruptions. Think of it as a sort of back-up mechanism on a single table. Accidentally deleted a record? Retrieve it from the history table and insert it back into the main table

See Introduction to SQL Server 2016 Temporal Tables for more info

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