Read up on Access WORKSPACES. In a single-box environment such as you run when you do the Terminal Services case, you might have a single workspace. If so, your users are sharing a bit TOO much.
When everyone has a copy of Access and you share the database file only, you each have a workspace in your local workstation memory. If you just used the server as a file server and loaded Access from the server - but run it locally on your PC, again you would have a unique workspace and this problem wouldn't occur. In the case of Terminal Services, you don't have a unique workspace (I think) and therein lies your problem.
You don't say whether everyone has their own Access license. That makes a huge difference in what you are doing. If everyone has a copy of Access, then stop reading here. If not...
I VERY STRONGLY advise you to read your Access license. I'm not going to say with absolute certainty it is a violation to run Access this way, but it might be. I'm not enough of a lawyer to know the fine points of the law near you. So consider this as a legal layman's OPINION.
If you don't have licenses for every user, you are in essence trying to get around paying MicroSoft license fees. OK, I understand that - they ARE, after all, money-grubbing gringos - but do YOU realize that you might be in violation of state and federal statutes regarding technical theft of software? Here is why I say that. This excerpt comes from the standard Access End-User License Agreement (EULA), which is part of the product's Help Files:
You may also store or install a copy of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on a storage device, such as a network server, used only to RUN the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your other COMPUTERS over an internal network; however, you must acquire and dedicate a license for each separate COMPUTER on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is RUN from the storage device. A license for the SOFTWARE PRODUCT may not be shared or used concurrently on different COMPUTERS.
This is from paragraph 1 (Grant of License), sub-heading Storage/Network Use. I believe that if you don't have a copy of Access for every user, the specific usage you described violates that part of this agreement that starts at the "; however" portion of that paragraph.
I don't know where you are, not even as to country, so I don't know which laws apply in your country, but I'll tell you now that NO law will supercede the EULA. In my home state of Louisiana, USA, if I have correctly interpreted what you are doing, you could be found guilty of a low-level felony for which a $25,000 (US) fine and 5 years in jail could result, based on violations of the software-licensing laws. Also in some areas called the "shrink-wrap" law.
So if you have licenses and copies of Access for everyone, use them. If you don't, you had better be VERY careful.
