Advanced Access Password Recovery: README ========================================= Contents -------- Program information Company information Description Requirements Usage Technical support Registration Copyright and license Where to get the latest version Program information ------------------- Program Archive Name: acpr.zip Program Name: Advanced Access Password Recovery Program Version: 2.5 Program Release Date: August 4, 2000 Program Description: Retrieves the password for MS Access 95/97/2000 database Target OS: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Software type: Shareware ($30 for personal license, $60 for business license) Company information ------------------- Company Name: Elcom Ltd Contact E-mail Address: support@elcomsoft.com Contact WWW URL: http://www.elcomsoft.com/acpr.html Contact Postal Address: 2-171 generala Antonova St. Moscow 117279 Russia Description ----------- This program (Advanced Access Password Recovery, or simply ACPR) can be used to recover your lost password for Microsoft Access 95/97/2000 database. In addition, it can remove the password from the database, or change it to another (your) one (available for Access 95/97 databases only). Requirements ------------ - Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT 2000 - about 600 kilobytes of hard disk space Usage ----- The program is a GUI application; you can run it bu just selecting the "Advanced Access Password Recovery" menu item from the appropriate program group created during installation. Alternatively, you can double-click on "acpr.exe" in the folder you've installed ACPR to. The main program window is quite simple, and contains just a few buttons, status Window, and an option (the option will be explained later). To open the Access database for password recovering, press the "Open file..." button (the left one). If the file you select is a valid password-protected Access 95/97 database, the following information will be displayed in the status window: Trying to open a source file test.mdb ... File test.mdb successfully opened (Access 95/97) Found the password: 'Test' (without quotes; copied to the Clipboard) Password in hex: 54 65 73 74 Now you can change or disable the password Please note that unregistered version shown only first three letters of the password, and the other ones (4th and up) are replaced with '#' characters (the length of the password is correct, however); password in hex is not shown at all. To see the complete password (in both forms), please consider purchasing the full version. If the file is not a database, or has been created using older version of Access (2.0), or doesn't have the password at all, an appropriate message will be displayed. If the password is recovered and the database has been crated in Access 95/97 (but not Access 2000), the next two buttons become available (in registered version): "Delete password" and "Change password". The first one just removes the protection from the given database; and the second ones allows to change the password to any one of your choice. Just note that if the file is read-only or on the read-only disk, the changes will not be done (you'll see the error message); just copy that file to another location, and clear the read-only attribute (if needed). Caution: please use these features (change and delete the password) with a GREAT care! If ACPR has shown some "unusual" characters in the password (something other than latin letters, digits and special chars like @,$,% etc), it may mean that the database is corrupted. Please be sure that the option "Backup source file" is enabled, and don't delete the original file (backup -- with the .bak extension), until you'll see that database can be opened without any problems in MS Access! If you'll get any troubles with the newdatabase (without the password, or with your new one), you'll have a chance to rollback the changes. Please note that sometime the daabase looks password-protected (and so you get the password prompt when trying to open it), while actually it doesn't. It means that the file is corrupted; for more information, please look at Microsoft articles: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q243/8/95.asp http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q246/0/33.asp ACPR recognize most of such databases successfully (and displays an appropriate message), but anyway -- if you see that the password looks really strange (conains some funny ASCII characters etc), be careful! Technical support ----------------- For technical support, please us at support@elcomsoft.com. Registration ------------ This program is distributed as shareware (look at "license.txt" for details). Being unregistered, it shows only first three chars of the database password (the other chars are replaced with '#' characters), and doesn't allow to change and remove the password. After you register (look at "order.txt" for details), we'll send you your personal registration code. To enter it into the program, just press the "Register" button on the main screen; the program will display the small window dialog asking you to enter the code. If the code is correct, ACPR shows the message that it is registered now, and so since than will show all characters of the password, and allow to change and delete the passwords. Please note that your registration will be valid for all future versions of ACPR -- it means, that they will be free for you. Copyright and license --------------------- See "license.txt" file. Where to get the latest version ------------------------------- The latest version of ACPR is always available from our web page at: http://www.elcomsoft.com/acpr.html Please also have a look at other password recovery products made by our company: http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html You will find the password recovery software for Microsoft Word/Excel documents (all versions), VBA projects, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Backup, Microsoft Money, ZIP/ARJ/RAR archives, Lotus SmartSuite (Organizer, WordPro, 1-2-3, Approach) and NT users there; more products will follow.