Access 97 and Windows 2000

[brucle]

I am experiencing severe speed issues running Access 97 on a Windows 2000 machine. (1.4 ghz, 256 mb ram 16 mb video card), linking to tables over a LAN.
Any queries that I run take a long time to execute and seem to lock the computer while they are running. The video display does not refresh properly (portions of a previous screen remain for 20- 30 seconds) During this time I get 100% CPU usage. Any opinions on what could be causing this?

 

[crosmill]

How big are the tables your running the queries on and how complex are the queries

 

[brucle]

the tables can be virtually any size. I have some that are almost 1gb and others that are 1- 2 mb. I can undestand a complex query that is chugging through one or two of the big brutes taking a long time, but even these should not grab 100% of the CPU cycles. I have noticed this problem running fairly simple queries on relatively small databases. The size doesn't explain the weird video display, since the video *should* be processed independently of the CPU (right?)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

since the video *should* be processed independently of the CPU (right?)

Not necessarily. During a query, the CPU is busy processing records. During form operations, there are natural gaps during which updates can occur. When an event chain is fired off, the end of the chain allows things to be redrawn. You can run code that does a RePaint for form operations - or you can call function DoEvents() to allow other things to occur. There is also a database .Idle method to allow other windows (non-Access) to do their thing.

During a query activated directly from the query page or from a macro or form action (not counting the record operations of the form's underlying recordset), the query is priority number one, as far as I can determine.

For the big database, particularly if the query involves complex string operations or (Heavens forefend) a domain-aggregate function as one of the criteria, there is where you have a problem.

 

[brucle]

Thanks for the reply. It seems I need two or three computers to get my work done quickly. ( I'm sure the boss will be receptive to this idea <g>)