In 99% of cases, the driver is physically present on the hard drive. The issue is that the Windows Registry—where the BDE looks to find out where that driver is located—is either missing the directions or, more commonly, has been blocked from accessing them due to security permissions.

When a BDE application is writing to the table header (e.g., restructuring a table, adding a field, or packing the database), an unexpected power failure or forced reboot can leave the header partially written. The next time the BDE reads the file, it encounters an incomplete or checksum-invalid header.

The BDE ships with several command-line utilities (if your developer included them):