Bill,

At 09:23 PM 27/03/2004 +1100, you wrote:

>
>Helen and Alan
>
>Thanks for your replies to my problem. Have met with the system
>administrator and did the following:
>
>Turned disk shadow off (it was turned on).
>Checked and located gds32.dll in the windows system directory - placed there
>by the FB1.5 install. Neither Interbase or Firebird has previously been
>installed on this system.
>Went to client machine and experienced same problem as previously reported.
>
>The system administrator has provided me with the following details about
>the system - the system is a Domain Environment that contains a dedicated
>stand alone server with MS Windows 2003 Small Business Server as its
>operating system. All the client machines are run by Windows XP
>Professional. The database (Ace.fdb) is located on the server on S:/Ace.fdb
> This drive is mapped to path //pa-hq-svr-rdc/pulbrook air/sales ace/ace
>fdb.

This is your problem. It is a mapped drive, as I described to you in the
previous response. It must be an absolute path.

>
>As explained previously, the application uses IBX component to attach to the
>database. The database name passed to the component is obtained from a
>registry entry that is placed in the registry from the application setup.
>In this application connection setup dialog the user can select either Local
>or Remote and the path (including .fdb) in which the database resides. If
>Remote, then choice of connection type (default TCP/IP) and server name.
>The database connection path is formatted into a string, dependant on the
>user input, and stored in the registry. For example, if user selects local
>and enters path to database then database name passed to IBX component would
>simply be the path entered; if remote and TCP/IP are selected then the
>database name would be 'server name:path'.

A local connect is possible on the machine where the server and the
database are PHYSICALLY located. Again, a mapped drive can not emulate a
local drive.

>
>On the client machine if I setup the connection as local and path = S:\Ace
>fdb I appear to get a connection although if I try to add new users (can be
>done from the application when logged in as SYSDBA) I get an unable to
>access services message.

You should not even *try* to connect to this path. If you *could* get
write access, you stand to corrupt your data. Is that clear enough for you?

> Also when I try to login from another client
>machine the FB server seems to hang. Once the network server is rebooted I
>can simply duplicate the above. If the setup is remote, TCP/IP, server name
>= pa-hq-svr-rdc, path = d:\pulbrook air\sales ace\ace.fdb so the database
>name passed to the IBX component is 'pa-hq-svr-rdc:d:\pulbrook air\sales
>ace\ace.fdb' then I cannot get a connection.
>
>Any help would be appreciated.

Would you please re-read my long previous posting, which I was sure spelled
out the need to use an absolute path and NOT a mapped drive. It's just as
well it won't work. I've heard of cases with IB databases where people
claimed they were able to write...and next thing, they had a busted
database. There are reasons why things are as they are.

/heLen