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Alex
Name:Alex Dybenko

Location:Moscow, Russia

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Another service to block VBA

Got i from friend of mine, be aware of this CylancePROTECT Script Control...

Hi Everyone

I spent a frustrating five hours yesterday tracking down a problem on some (but not all) of one of my clients’ workstations, and I hope I might save some of you from a similar waste of time.

Attempts to open their Access application (an ACCDR) with the /runtime switch gave:

               Execution of this application has stopped due to a run-time error.

               The application can’t continue and will shut down.

Further investigation, running it as an ACCDB, showed that any attempt to touch the ErrEx class (Wayne Philips’ vbWatchdog) gave:

               Run-time error '453':

               Can't find DLL entry point VirtualAlloc in kernel32

This was from a call to VirtualAlloc from the Class_Initialize event procedure of ErrEx.

My initial thought was that a Microsoft update over the weekend had installed something that was interfering with vbWatchdog, so I was composing as email to Wayne when I thought to try some other calls to Kernel32 functions.  They all failed with Error 453, as did calls to User32 procedures.

I then spent considerable time uninstalling updates and reverting to restore points, without any success.  While googling for ideas, I found this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56201309/need-to-fix-this-error-cant-find-dll-entry-point-getsysteminfo-in-kernel32

Note the final comment by the OP.

Sure enough, I checked and there was a service named “CylancePROTECT” running on the workstation I was looking at.

I called their IT “support” company and finally found somebody who knew that they were trialling new “security software” on some of their customers’ workstations.  I googled it, and it includes a “script control” feature which blocks certain functions in “scripts”, which apparently include VBA code:

https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/cylance/documents/pdf/pdf-feature-focus-protect-script-control.pdf

In this document, it recommends “that administrators initially enable CylancePROTECT Script Control in Alert Mode to monitor and observe all scripts running in their environment.”  Then later, “Once administrators have a good understanding of all scripts running in their environment, they can change their settings to block mode and only allow scripts to run out of specified folders.”  Of course, these idiots had not followed these recommendations.

Anyway, I hope this is useful knowledge to put in the toolbox if ever you are diagnosing Error 453.

Cheers,

Graham


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Thursday, March 21, 2019

AccessImagine

AccessImagine is ActiveX control, which helps to insert images into DB – from file, webcam, clipboard or drag-n-drop, crop and display images, store outside database.

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Monday, March 04, 2019

Access System Tables

64 different system tables were documented  and summarised the properties

Purpose of System Tables
How Access Stores Queries
Using multivalued fields..and why you really shouldn't
How Access manages Relationships
Using Column History in Memo/Long Text fields
Remove deleted objects from MSysObjects

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Monday, January 07, 2019

VBA Code Examples

Several useful VBA routines, like file/string hashing, file/folder utilities, sorting, etc:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Collections/VBA_Code_Examples

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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Office 2019 is released

Monday, November 13, 2017

Happy birthday, Microsoft Access!

25 years ago, November 13, 1992, Access 1.0 was relased, and almost the same time I started to work with it! Long life, Mr. Access!

Here some introductionary words from its father, Bill Gates:

https://youtu.be/evMilwVBHAQ?t=11m55s

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Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Access Web Apps–the end?

We no longer recommend Access Services for new apps. This feature will be retired from Office 365. We will stop creation of new Access-based apps in SharePoint Online starting June 2017 and shut down any remaining apps by April 2018.

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