Symptoms
I receive an error similar to the following:
Provider error '8000ffff'
Catastrophic failure
Cause
This is caused when connecting to a Microsoft Access database using a connection string containing "Driver="{Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}". This driver is out-dated and should not be used with the latest version of Microsoft's MDAC which is installed on all web servers.
Resolution
Use the following DSN-less connection string for your Microsoft Access connections instead of the Microsoft Access ODBC driver:
For Microsoft Access Databases:
ConnStr = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=d:\inetpub\xxx\_private\myaccessfile.mdb"
Note that there is a space between "Data" and "Source". This parameter should be specified as "Data Source=".