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EPSKED MDAC Information Page
(Microsoft Data Access Components)
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EPSKED 4.1, the emergency physician scheduling
program, requires that version 2.0 of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC)
be present on your computer. MDAC is a set of programs that allow access to
Microsoft databases. MDAC is used by many programs, including Microsoft
Office, and may already be installed on your computer.
You will be referred to this page by the
EPSKED installation program if it finds that your computer does not already
have MDAC 2.0 installed. Instructions are also given below that allow you to
manually check your computer for the basic MDAC installation file.
For overview information about MDAC
from Microsoft, please see the
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC)
Installation FAQ. Note that Microsoft feels that "The Microsoft Data
Access Components are system components, and installing MDAC should be
considered similar to a system upgrade."
For more technical information about the
considerations involved in MDAC distribution and installation, please see
Redistributing Microsoft Data Access Components.
If you have a version of MDAC higher
than 2.0 already installed on your computer, please
see an explanation of
why we used MDAC version 2.0 for EPSKED, and what you need to do
to get everything working correctly. |
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If MDAC version 2.0 is already present and
functioning normally on your computer, you do not need to download and
reinstall the programs again. One of the essential files in the version of
MDAC used by EPSKED is the Microsoft msrd2x35.dll
file. To check if this is present on your computer:
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Click on the Windows Start
button, then select Find, then select Files or
Folders...
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Make sure that the Look in:
option is set to your C: drive.
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In the Find: All Files window
that appears, type in msrd2x35.dll in the
Named: text entry area.
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Click the Find Now
button.
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If your computer finds that the
msrd2x35.dll file is present on your computer you likely do not
need to download MDAC unless you receive error messages related to
accessing either the EPSKED schedule or email database.
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If you have problems downloading the
MDAC installation file, try these suggestions:
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Try downloading the file again.
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Try downloading the file at an
off-peak time. There may be heavy traffic on the server or the
Internet which interferes with downloading the file. Access is
more reliable at a less busy time, such as early in the morning
or late at night (like when you get home from a swing shift.)
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If downloading still doesn't work,
report it to
support@bytebloc.com. Please indicate the date, time of day
you tried to download the file and the error message you
received.
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Important Note: the version of the MDAC Installation
Program downloaded above is the specific one that will work with
EPSKED -- do not download another version from any other sites
other than the
Microsoft site or it may not allow EPSKED to function
correctly!
If you have problems running the MDAC
installation file:
We have had very few reported
problems with the MDAC installation. The Microsoft web site
includes a page titled
MDAC Setup Troubleshooting guide at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;232060
which provides several
suggestions. Make sure that you have unloaded all program files
(including antivirus programs) before retrying the installation.
The MDAC installation program is
produced by Microsoft, and we have no way of modifying it. The
Microsoft knowledge base at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;kbinfo
lists a large number of problems related to MDAC installation.
You might try searching for the specific wording of your error
and see if it is listed; if so, that would be helpful.
If the suggestions above do not
solve the problem, the MDAC installation program can generate a
log of its activities; from that log, we may be able to provide
some clues as to the next step toward fixing the problem. We
have developed a "wrapper" program for the MDAC installation
which automatically performs the steps described in the "MDAC
Setup has failed. What should I do now?" section of the
MDAC Setup Troubleshooting guide. You can download and run
the program from:
http://www.bytebloc.com/downloads/Debug_MDAC20_Install.EXE
When you run this program file it:
1) Creates this folder on your C drive: C:\MDAC20Temp
2) Copies the mdac_typ.exe MDAC installation file to the folder
3) Expands all of the installation files contained in
mdac_typ.exe into the folder
4) Runs the setup.exe program to perform the MDAC installation
while creating a log of all activities. The file is created at:
C:\MDAC20Temp\Mdaclog.txt
Please
download
and run the program, then send a copy of the created
C:\MDAC20Temp\Mdaclog.txt
file to us. You can sent either the copied and pasted text in an
email, or attach the file to an email sent to:
support@bytebloc.com
Also, advise us as to which
operating system you are using (Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT4.0,
2000, or XP) and provide a brief description of what you are
seeing during installation. We will hopefully be able to figure
out what is happening and provide a fix.
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When you download
the Microsoft MDAC installation program you should save it into the
same folder where you saved the EPSKED Installation Program. When
your download is completed, simply restart the EPSKED Installation
Program and it will automatically run the Microsoft MDAC
installation program when needed.
Click here to download the
MDAC Installation Program (MDAC_TYP.EXE) now. (Size: 6.0MB)
The
time required to download MDAC will depend upon the speed of your
Internet connection -- download time could run from about half an
hour (28.8 modem) to a few seconds (T1 or better connection).
After
you have finished, simply restart the EPSKED Installation Program.
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Welcome to what
has become known as "DLL Hell". More details and references about
this subject are included below. We elected to use the older
Jet 3.51 compatible MDAC installation included with MDAC 2.0 because that was the only way
we could ensure that EPSKED could coexist with all other
applications (see below). If we used a newer Jet 4.0 compatible MDAC,
we would break existing Jet 3.51 applications on a user's computer
and we would have no way to fix them.
You should be able
to get everything to work on newer systems if you:
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Install the
older MDAC over the newer MDAC using the installation program
from our website at http://www.bytebloc.com/MDAC20.html (mdac_typ.exe
Version 2.0.0.3002.20 dated 9/1/98). I know that it "hurts" to
do this!
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Install EPSKED.
The installation uses a "local file method" for double
installing some key database access files which should allow
coexistence of the Jet 3.51 and the Jet 4.0 database providers
on Microsoft Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows
XP systems.
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Reinstall your
updated MDAC using mdac_typ.exe 2.1 or higher so that your
Office 2000/XP applications will work correctly. The latest
version at the time of this writing (2.7 -- the same installed
by Windows XP) is available from Microsoft at:
http://www.microsoft.com/data/download_270RTM.htm
or if a later version is available it should be linked to from
http://www.microsoft.com/data/download.htm
The MDAC 2.7 installation file is also included on our
installation CD for EPSKED, named as mdac27_typ.exe .
Note that the MDAC installation program for versions 2.6 and later
does not reinstall the Jet 4.0 database provider. If you have
problems with other programs (we have so far not come across this as
being a problem in the past three years!), Jet 4.0 may also need reinstallation. If needed,
the correct Jet installation program for your system can be
downloaded from:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q282/0/10.ASP
These files are also included on our installation CD distributed
with EPSKED.
For your information, some more technical details on the problem
from our perspective
We spent a few
unhappy days researching this problem in early April 2001 when were
preparing to release the EPSKED 4 and were running the installation on
different OS test beds. The experience personally shook our belief
that Microsoft has any clue about what they are doing with some of
their major Office software and their file dependencies. Our updated
summary from that investigation and the problem:
"The Microsoft drivers for the Microsoft Jet 3.51 and Jet 4.0
database providers have exactly the same names and need to be
installed in the exactly the same folders, but are not compatible.
EPSKED 4.1 uses Jet 3.51 and works fine with Office 97 installed,
which uses the same database provider. Office 2000 and later uses
Jet 4.0, which is also automatically installed by Windows XP. If
EPSKED is installed and adds the necessary provider files for its
function, it can break some of the Office 2000 and later programs.
There seems to be no easily implemented general way around this that
will work with all Operating Systems. We just need to be able to fix
anything that goes wrong with a system. Microsoft distributes a
MDAC_TYP.EXE program that installs the database files. Depending
upon the version of that file (exactly the same
names!) it installs either Jet 3.51 or Jet 4.0 (mdac_typ.exe version
2.1 or higher) files. What a mess."
To view a very detailed overview of the
origins of the some of the problem, and the files required to get
Jet 3.51 to function correctly,
click here.
The identical file naming problem is explained by Microsoft
at:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q237/5/75.ASP
which describes a manual method of switching back and forth between
Jet 3.51 and the Jet 4.0, that no one is likely to use and works
only on older systems.
The best article pertinent to making Jet
3.51 and 4.1 work together is at:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q244/0/40.ASP
and is titled "HOWTO: Have Your ODBC Jet 3.5 and 4.0 Applications
Co-exist". EPSKED implements "The LOCAL File Method" of getting this
coexistence to work. The information on that page indicates that
this method works only with Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition and
Microsoft Windows 2000, but also works for Windows ME and XP on our
test systems.
We have looking at modifying EPSKED 4.1 to detect whether Jet 3.5 or
4.0 is installed on a system and run using either, but this proved
infeasible. The problem of tracking down file dependencies on a
user's system in the event of a problem would be difficult, to say
the least. If a schedule database were used on several different
computers, all would need to be Jet 4.0 compatible or the schedule
database would be rendered unreadable to all computers using Jet
3.5. |
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