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MS Access has tangled but unsafe security model. It is
quite difficult to understand it, but it is possible to recover any
password instantly.
We receive a lot of questions concerning Access
password recovery. This article is addressed to those users who are
unfamiliar with MS Access security model.
There are two different password types in MS Access:
database passwords and user passwords. Unlike most competitive products,
Access Password can recover both password types (Pro version is required
to recover user passwords).
Let's consider both password types in detail.
Database passwords (sometimes referred to share-level
passwords) were introduced in Access 95. There are no Database passwords
in Access 2.0.If the Database password is enabled, the following dialog
box appears every time you open the database.
Note that we use Access 2000 to take screenshots for
this article. In other versions dialog boxes can have a little different
look.
As you can see password only asked. There is no a
prompt for the user's name because the database password is the same for
all users.
If entered password is not valid, the following window
will appear:
Database password is stored in the database. Although
the password is encrypted, it is possible to extract and decrypt it
instantly.
Note that if database header is broken, MS Access may
erroneously treat the database as the password protected one. Access
Password can detect broken databases. We can try to recover your broken
database manually.
Email us for a price quote. Please specify in the email size of your
database.
User passwords are presented in all MS Access versions,
this is the basic security mechanism in Access. In a user-level security
system, users are authenticated when they start Microsoft Access by
logging on with a password. Both user's name and passwords are required.
Different users can have different permissions on the same objects.
Permissions may be granted to a single user or to users group. Group
information and users' passwords are stored in a special system
database. One system database could be shared between different
databases and applications.
User password (if enabled) is asked at Access startup.
Note that in contrast to a Database password, user's name is being asked
along with password. Password prompt dialog looks like this:
If password is entered the following message box will
appear:
It is very important to realize that user passwords
are NOT stored in the database. They are stored in a so-called system
database. Normally system database has .mda file type in Access 2.0 and
.mdw in newer versions. Unfortunately .mda file type is also used for MS
Access add-ins, so file with .mda files type may be or may not be a
system database.
System database is required to recover users'
passwords groups membership information. If the system database is lost
or broken you can't recover users' password. Future version of Access
Password will be able to regain access to a database without system
database.
You can use Tools -> Security -> Workgroup
administrator menu command in MS Access to create new system database or
to select which system database you would like to use by default. Note
that there is no such menu command in older Access versions; use
standalone wrkgadm.exe utility to do this.
Often password problems appear when wrong system
database is selected. In this case you may be unable to view or to edit
some tables. Sometimes you may be unable even to open the database.
You may receive various errors, most common are shown
on the following screenshots:
In this case you should locate correct system database
and join it using workgroup administrator menu command. |
