>>>>will this work? if so, how? i can't get my program to recognize an access 7.0 database. we have to use the 16-bit system for now (clients are slow to upgrade)

>>ok. what we have so far is that you can't use the jet engine directly, because vb uses a different driver based on development in 16 or 32 bit environment. what we're going to try is accessing the mdb (no pun intended) through odbc. will let you know what happens.
>
>trying access7.0 through odbc hangs system. who knew?

What else one can expect from MS? :) After all, EDLIN keeps coming to mind :)
But seriously, was your Access database created in 16-bit environment?...Actually,
I don't even know what to ask, because I know how weird Access ODBC is from my
Visual dBase experience. I was doing some data lookup from my app using
ODBC, and it would not just hang the system, - it kept bombing on me and the only
way out was to press the reset button. The screen was covered with multiple
instances of the notorious MS message saying something about exception error.

Did you try the Query option? SQL? Nothing worked? If nothing else, can you
just read the damn file as an ASCII and try to figure what part of the resulted
garbage belongs to what field? (I know that's the stupidest suggestion, but heck -
if there is no other way, then why not!)