Ring us. Don’t email.
The system has stopped, the data has gone missing or nobody can log in. You only need to tell us what people can see.
You don’t need to know what’s wrong, or even what the system is built in. Say when it started and what changed. Working out which part has failed is our job, and it’s usually the first ten minutes of the call. The person who answers at CDE Systems does the work, so there’s no call centre to get past.
Ring now, and while it rings, do the three things below.
Three things to do first
- Stop people using it. Every change made to a damaged database makes it harder to recover.
- Take a copy of whatever you can, and leave that copy alone. Don’t run a repair on the only copy you have.
- Write down what changed. An update, a restart or a server move, or something someone did on Friday.
Once you’re through
- We find out what the system is and where it’s failing, even if it’s something nobody has documented.
- Early on, you’ll hear whether this is a quick fix or a longer job.
- If it helps, we connect to the system while we’re on the phone. It’s a single download that installs nothing, and you can see everything we do.
- Getting people working comes first. That might be a workaround or a partial recovery, with the full fix to follow.
- Once things are running, we track down the cause, check whether any data was affected, and explain what will stop it happening again.
It might not be the database
The fault can be in the application, the server, the network, a link to another system or the reports. We look at all of it, so you won’t be passed from one supplier to the next while someone works out whose problem it is.
If you have them to hand
- Written permission for us to connect to a live system. An email sent during the call will do
- A purchase order number, if your organisation uses them. It can come later
Neither should hold up the call.
Does it need to be now?
Yes, ring, if the system is down, data is missing or corrupt, people can’t work, or it has slowed to the point of being unusable.
Tomorrow is fine if it’s one wrong report, or a fault that has been around for weeks. That’s database support, with the same people.
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Ring
If data is corrupt or missing, there’s more on database recovery and data rescue. If you know what it’s built in, there’s emergency Access support and emergency SQL Server support.