The online FAQ database contains hundreds of answers to frequently asked questions, articles on using our web server applications and other related technologies, and resolutions to common problems. If you are seeing an error message, be sure to try searching on the error message or error number that you are seeing.

Question When trying to perform a search, I get the following error message.

Microsoft Cursor Engine error '80004005'
Data provider or other service returned an E_FAIL status.

Answer This error message is typically due to a bug (limitation) in the Microsoft ADO library or database driver in use. The recommended solutions in order of preference are listed below. Many of these suggestions require the updating of system libraries or drivers on the web server. If your web server is actually a shared server at your ISP, you will need to contact your ISP to see if they can perform these updates.

  1. Make sure you have the most recent version of the database driver installed. This is included as part of the next items for JET or SQL Server databases.
  2. Make sure you have installed the JET 4.0 Service Pack 3 (or later) if using a JET database.
  3. Make sure the Microsoft ADO library is up to date (version 2.6 at this writing).
  4. If you have version 1.1.0 or previous of XcDirectory, update it to a newer release.


These can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site at: www.microsoft.com/data/