Wednesday 28 January 2009

ASP.NET Access DB write problem

Recently I was working on simple ASP.NET website that had to update Access Database. Everything was fine during development when I was using ASP.NET Development Server created by Visual Studio. Later when I connected with Internet browser to http://localhost/mywebsite/Default.aspx I started getting two kind of unhandled exceptions on Database insert and update.

Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80004005'

The Microsoft Jet database engine cannot open the file 'C:\DB\YourDatabase.mdb'. It is already opened exclusively by another user, or you need permission to view its data.

or this one

Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80004005'

Operation must use an updateable query.

After looking on the internet I found a couple of links that shed some light on this problem.

How Do I Fix ASP 80004005 errors? - Imar.Spaanjaars.Com

An unhandled exception may occur when you try to connect to an Access database from an ASP.NET worker process.

I tried to fix a problem by following instructions on these pages, unfortunately adding permission for IUSR_MyComputerName system user to access DB folder did not make a difference. The quick and easy (and NOT RECOMMENDED for production installation) solution is to add Everyone to access to DB folder and write to database. I want to repeat that this is not a good solution for security reasons, my preference is to try to change an account under which IIS service is running. I will post my solution later once I get it working.

References

How to configure file sharing in Windows XP