Microsoft KB Archive/189206

= PRB: "Couldn't Find File 'Unknown'" Error When You Set Default Language to JScript =

Article ID: 189206

Article Last Modified on 7/20/2004

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual InterDev 1.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Data Access Components 1.5
 * Microsoft Data Access Components 2.1
 * Microsoft Data Access Components 2.5
 * Microsoft Data Access Components 2.6
 * Microsoft Active Server Pages 1.0

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This article was previously published under Q189206



SYMPTOMS
When the default language is set to JScript for Active Server Pages (ASP) connecting to a file-based database (for example, Access, Visual FoxPro) returns an error such as the following:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access 97 Driver] Couldn't find file '(unknown)'.

This error occurs only with connect strings that contain discrete or UNC paths such as "c:\newdata\backup.mdb" or \\servername\sharename\backup.mdb, respectively. For example, adding a data connection to a Visual InterDev 1.0 Web Project for the adventure works database from within Visual InterDev 1.0 would create the following connection string in your Global.asa:   "DSN=AdvWorks;DBQ=C:\InetPub\ASPSAMP\AdvWorks\AdvWorks.mdb;   DriverId=25;FIL=MS Access;MaxBufferSize=512;PageTimeout=5;"); When trying to open a text file, an error occurs such as the following:

Server object error 'ASP 0177 : 800a0034'

Server.CreateObject Failed

This error occurs when calling GetFile or OpenTextFile as in the following:   fl = fs.OpenTextFile("c:\\myfile.txt", 1, 0,0);



CAUSE
The error is due to the backslash character (\) being used as a delimiter both in file paths and as the identifier for "escape sequences" in JScript.

Examples of escape sequences are "\n" for a new line or "\b" for a backspace. Two backslashes (\\) resolve to a single backslash. If the character following the backslash is not a known escape sequence identifier, the backslash is ignored.

As a result, JScript resolves the string "c:\newdata\backup.mdb" to "c: ewdataackup.mdb" where the "\n" is replaced with a carriage return and the "\b" is replaced with a backspace. JScript would resolve "\\servername\sharename\backup.mdb" to "\servernamesharenameackup.mdb" where the "\\" is replaced with a single backslash and "\b" is replaced with a backspace.

In cases such as these, the resulting string passed to the Connection.Open method is an invalid file location, resulting in an error.



RESOLUTION
There are several possible workarounds:
 * Replace all backslashes (\) in your connect strings with two backslashes (\\). For example: "\\\\servername\\sharename\\backup.mdb" would resolve to "\\servername\sharename\backup.mdb."
 * Use VBScript instead of JScript.
 * Store all path information in an ODBC DSN and only pass the DSN name to the Connection.Open method as in: Connection.Open "MyDSN."



STATUS
This behavior is by design.

