A client of mine has had an HD failure and her FM databases, although recovered from the disk, have become inaccessible. She gets a message "Access privileges in this file have been damaged or possibly tampered with". But there was no password protection on any of them. Is there anything we can do to get access to the files?

Steve:

If you have an old backup of the files, you can try to access by importing. First, duplicate the old backups, then delete all the data in the duplicates. Now, file-by-file, try to import from the corrupted files. This way, all your relationships, etc., remain intact. Obviously, you'll lose any programming changes made since the backups were made.

You could also try to open the files with a password, but not enter one. To do that, hit cmd-o to open the open dialog, then hold down (I think) cmd-option (Mac) or (now I'm really guessing) alt-shift (on PC) while clicking on the file to open. It will ask for a password. Leave the password blank and just hit OK, and see if that fools the access priveleges into opening the file... It's a blind stab in the dark, but you never know.

Good luck

-Stanley

You have some serious data corruption there. Send them to FMI for recovery. This is a chargeable service.