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Hey I'm working on Windows in an office environment with an uncooperative MS Access database.

We're experiencing crashes and hangs with no error messages. I am used to a *nix environment where I can launch a program from the terminal and get stdout/stderr redouts making it much easier to see what was running just before it crashed the computer...

Experimenting with launching from windows' cmd hasn't yielded anything similar (not dug too far into powershell because I'm not allowed admin privileges on this machine ¬_¬). Does anyone know a way I can dig beyond a hanging GUI and get at a readout of logs, or preferably see messages piped to the command-line as the program whurrs away?

Worth noting I'm in a restrictive IT environment where I cannot install any additional tools, so whilst I'll be interested to hear about the wonder program that will solve my problems I'll be unable to install anything that isn't built in to Windows.

Huw
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    Access doesn't write or read the console. It's a graphical program. Windbg is what you need. It's in debugging tools for windows which you have to download in the Windows SDK. Although Access can debug it's own vba code. Always look in Problem Reports and Solutions (type control then Review Computer Status) for crash info and also Event Viewer. –  Feb 16 '16 at 12:17
  • First steps: Repair/Compact and [Decompile](http://stackoverflow.com/a/3268188/3820271) your frontend database. – Andre Feb 16 '16 at 12:21
  • Points for `WinDbg`, but alas officelife. Agree on VBA but that's out for other reasons - thanks! – Huw Feb 16 '16 at 14:23

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There is no such thing in MS Access.

You will have to write your own error handling that will write errors to a log table or log file. Of course, this will only work until your application halts.

The behaviour you describe is not normal, so the cause for your trouble may very well be anything but MS Access itself.

Gustav
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  • Precisely, I'm half convinced it's our network connectivity... but I have little way of finding out! Thanks Gustav, you get the answer. – Huw Feb 16 '16 at 14:22