Microsoft Access opening by itself for no reason?

I have an odd issue. A co-worker leaves her computer on overnight in case anyone needs to access her "my documents" over the network outside business hours (it is shared and our office runs 24 hours a day).

She then re-starts her computer in the morning when she comes in, provided no one is in her computer.

When she comes in each morning though, for the last few weeks, our Access Database is open, not just the program. We only have one database, and it is open, sometimes more than 10 times on her screen. We have asked everyone in the company whether they are doing it outside hours, and no one has been.

I checked all over, and there are no settings that I can see that are prompting the database to open.

I am at a loss. I have no idea why it's doing this. It never happens during the day, only at night.

 

Not my area of expertise, but could one of the following be occurring?
* Night users are incorrectly clicking on a short cut Icon for Access / Database.
* Auto backups running at night (settings changed recently?) of Access Database are displaying file to screen for some unknown reason.
* Microsoft addon / third party program causes problem ... example interface into email with filter set to Access Database updates.

raingirlIT, the above are off the cuff suggestions. Hopefully they will joggle a "oh yeah, we did this other change recently. Best of luck.

 

the backup thing may be a possibility, as our server does back-ups frequently. Maybe there is some setting on her computer that causes it to do that. Then again, the database is not on her computer, it's on a central server or something like that, and she only has a link to it.

I am going to leave a note on the computer and "paper clips" strategically placed under the mouse to see if any of it moves over night, and see of the program has popped up in the morning, and whether it appears as though anyone has used the computer.

 

It now gets a little more curious.

When I came in this morning, it was Word and not Access, just blank documents though. And there were 4 new documents, not just one.

She said it's been happening for about 2 months. It doesn't appear that anyone used the computer at all. Sometimes it's Access, sometimes it's Word, sometimes it's only one open, sometimes as many as 20 screens are open.

Could it be a hacker trying to get into the system, trying to run some kind of macro/code in word or access? I am going to run a security check on the browser (bcheck or a2 unless someone can suggest a better one).

She also has McAfee virus scanner, could that be accessing the programs and popping them up??

 

Check time and dates when documents were created. This will start your "Time Line ". Now go into Event Viewer. Look in Application, Security, and Systems views for the same time line as when documents were create. Anything unusal?? This is about as far as I can go in computer forensics. It also would be a good idea to start up your scan tools and look for a nasty that slip through defenses.

 

how do I check when they were created? If I save the blank document, will it say the time it was opened, or the time it was saved?

I did a quick check of the events from when she left work until the morning, and the only thing was a virus scan by McAfee at 2:45 am.

 

Are these documents sitting in 4x Word views (Word opened, but never saved), then no file (for Word97 which is what I use). If they were saved, check your "Date Created" column in Explorer.

Can't image McAfee causing this. Maybe disable nightly scan for one night.

Do you have any network tools (logs) you can use/check to see what / when this activity is occurring based on computer IP/name?

 

our network is very simple here, so I don't think we have anywhere central that would keep logs.

And yes, word opens, but files are not created. They are just blank documents. When Access opens, it is actually a file, our company database, but it's just the same file opened over and over again.