Access Stuck Using Security Workgroup

Question

My boss fancies himself an IT genius, and has created a number of databases, all secured with Access' user-level security MDW feature. Now for the MDW feature to work, you either have to craft shortcuts that point to the MDW, or you have to configure the workstation to use that MDW as default.

He chose the latter.

Now, when opening MY unsecured DBs, or even trying to create new blank ones, it wants me to login to his MDW. This cannot stand.

How can I reconfigure Access to use the default MDW (I think it is called System.MDW).

NB: I cannot run code in the VB window. I cannot open any databases at all. Solutions must likely be external to Access.

Answer 1

Okay, as it turns out, you need to modify the value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access\Access Connectivity Engine\Engines\SystemDB to "%appdata%\Microsoft\Access\System.mdw"

Or, in the case of Office 2010, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Access\Access Connectivity Engine\Engines\SystemDB

Not sure why I didn't look in the registry first.