> System is a built-in account. By default, the Firebird service runs
> under that account so no user needs to be logged in for the database
> server to run. Check the properties of the Firebird service in the
> Services applet in Control Panel to see which account is being used.

I'll check that, thanks.

> In a secure system, users should have NO rights to the database file.

OK, that's the way it SHOULD be... ;-)

> Ahh. So the original file is also affected? The plot thickens!
>
> What was the original problem with the database? Was it fixed on your
> machine? Copying a database file directly is not a good idea unless
> the database server is shutdown. The file may have some corruption.
>
> If you have a working copy on your machine, you should do a backup. On
> the client machine, create a new database and restore from your backup.

That's the problem: Even trying to create a new database causes an
"access denied" error. The original problem was as follows: I have a
method that automatically updates the database (if needed) when the
program file was updated. Now, due to some error, the database update
was half-done and half-not-done (because FB does not allow to put
certain DDL statements into a transaction - PostgreSQL can do that,
BTW). This caused more errors in the next run.
At first I told her to do a backup (my application has its own backup
functionality) and then rename the database file so that my
application might create a new one. She did so, but the creation
failed with the above mentioned error.
So I offered my client to do the necessary alterations manually for
her. She sent me the file, I changed it and sent it back, but the
error persisted.

More mysterious, I also have a single user edition of my application
that works with FB embedded server, so I gave her this one, and it
works fine with the DB file I sent to her. So, the FB server must have
some problem that the ES does not have. But which one? It's nothing
with user name/password at any rate.

BTW, I use Zeos components. Never had any serious trouble with them,
apart from the lack of documentation. But if the problem was in the
components, it wouldn't work with ES either.

Stefan