"Cannot find System.MDW file"

stevemur — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 18:20:20 GMT

Q: BigOven was working fine, but now I'm getting a message on startup that says it cannot find the "system.mdw" file.

A: This can be caused by two problems:

1) The file system.mdw was truncated or corrupted somehow, which can happen if your hard drive has a sector write anomoly, or if the computer was unplugged or the power reset in the middle of a write operation. We provide a fresh copy of it below.

But the more likely cause is:

2) The full file path to your system.mdw has been changed, so BigOven can no longer find it. (We do not recommend moving this file or the "My BigOven Recipes" folder from its default location.) We provide a link to a document in step (ii) below that will help you re-tell BigOven where this file is.

First, be sure to read this post about Where BigOven Looks for Files. BigOven is quite particular about where folders are on your PC, for performance reasons. (That is, so BigOven doesn't have to scan your whole computer to list recipe box files, etc.)

To resolve it, here are three things to try:

i) Exit out of BigOven, and try unzipping this copy of system.mdw and copying it OVER the existing System.mdw file that exists in your "My BigOven Recipes\Data" folder. (Don't worry, overwriting this one file will not alter any data that you may have already entered.)

ii) Be sure to check the registry keys described in this document -- in particular, check that the key SystemDatabasePath points to your system.mdw file.

iii) Perhaps your Microsoft Data Access Components installation is corrupt. See this post to resolve it.

Frequently Asked Questions

"Cannot find System.MDW file"