Advanced Access Password Recovery: README
=========================================

Contents
--------

  Program information
  Company information
  Description
  Requirements
  Usage
  Technical support
  Registration
  Copyright and license
  Where to get the latest version


Program information
-------------------

Program Archive Name:
  acpr.zip
Program Name:
  Advanced Access Password Recovery
Program Version:
  2.5
Program Release Date:
  August 4, 2000
Program Description:
  Retrieves the password for MS Access 95/97/2000 database
Target OS:
  Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000
Software type:
  Shareware ($30 for personal license, $60 for business license)


Company information
-------------------

Company Name:
  Elcom Ltd
Contact E-mail Address:
  support@elcomsoft.com
Contact WWW URL:
  http://www.elcomsoft.com/acpr.html
Contact Postal Address:
  2-171 generala Antonova St.
  Moscow 117279 Russia


Description
-----------

This program (Advanced Access Password Recovery, or simply
ACPR) can be used to recover your lost password for Microsoft
Access 95/97/2000 database. In addition, it can remove the password
from the database, or change it to another (your) one (available
for Access 95/97 databases only).


Requirements
------------

- Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT 2000
- about 600 kilobytes of hard disk space


Usage
-----

The program is a GUI application; you can run it bu just
selecting the "Advanced Access Password Recovery" menu item from
the appropriate program group created during installation.
Alternatively, you can double-click on "acpr.exe" in the folder
you've installed ACPR to.

The main program window is quite simple, and contains just a few
buttons, status Window, and an option (the option will be
explained later).

To open the Access database for password recovering, press the
"Open file..." button (the left one). If the file you select is
a valid password-protected Access 95/97 database, the following
information will be displayed in the status window:

Trying to open a source file test.mdb ...
File test.mdb successfully opened (Access 95/97)
Found the password: 'Test' (without quotes; copied to the Clipboard)
Password in hex: 54 65 73 74
Now you can change or disable the password

Please note that unregistered version shown only first three
letters of the password, and the other ones (4th and up) are
replaced with '#' characters (the length of the password is
correct, however); password in hex is not shown at all. To see
the complete password (in both forms), please consider purchasing
the full version.

If the file is not a database, or has been created using older
version of Access (2.0), or doesn't have the password at all, an
appropriate message will be displayed.

If the password is recovered and the database has been crated in
Access 95/97 (but not Access 2000), the next two buttons become
available (in registered version): "Delete password" and "Change
password". The first one just removes the protection from the
given database; and the second ones allows to change the
password to any one of your choice. Just note that if the
file is read-only or on the read-only disk, the changes will not
be done (you'll see the error message); just copy that file to
another location, and clear the read-only attribute (if needed).

Caution: please use these features (change and delete the
password) with a GREAT care! If ACPR has shown some "unusual"
characters in the password (something other than latin letters,
digits and special chars like @,$,% etc), it may mean that the
database is corrupted. Please be sure that the option "Backup
source file" is enabled, and don't delete the original file
(backup -- with the .bak extension), until you'll see that
database can be opened without any problems in MS Access! If
you'll get any troubles with the newdatabase (without the
password, or with your new one), you'll have a chance to
rollback the changes.

Please note that sometime the daabase looks password-protected
(and so you get the password prompt when trying to open it),
while actually it doesn't. It means that the file is corrupted;
for more information, please look at Microsoft articles:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q243/8/95.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q246/0/33.asp

ACPR recognize most of such databases successfully (and displays
an appropriate message), but anyway -- if you see that the
password looks really strange (conains some funny ASCII characters
etc), be careful!


Technical support
-----------------

For technical support, please us at support@elcomsoft.com.


Registration
------------

This program is distributed as shareware (look at "license.txt"
for details). Being unregistered, it shows only first three
chars of the database password (the other chars are replaced
with '#' characters), and doesn't allow to change and remove the
password.

After you register (look at "order.txt" for details), we'll
send you your personal registration code. To enter it into the
program, just press the "Register" button on the main screen;
the program will display the small window dialog asking you to
enter the code. If the code is correct, ACPR shows the message
that it is registered now, and so since than will show all
characters of the password, and allow to change and delete the
passwords.

Please note that your registration will be valid for all future
versions of ACPR -- it means, that they will be free for you.


Copyright and license
---------------------

See "license.txt" file.


Where to get the latest version
-------------------------------

The latest version of ACPR is always available from our
web page at:

http://www.elcomsoft.com/acpr.html

Please also have a look at other password recovery products made
by our company:

http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html

You will find the password recovery software for Microsoft
Word/Excel documents (all versions), VBA projects, Microsoft
Outlook, Microsoft Backup, Microsoft Money, ZIP/ARJ/RAR
archives, Lotus SmartSuite (Organizer, WordPro, 1-2-3, Approach)
and NT users there; more products will follow.