Access 2010 String Comparison Invalid procedure call - ms-access

Question

We've just upgraded from Access 2003 to Access 2010 and string comparisons are failing with an invalid procedure call error when default conditions are used. I’ve recreated two presumably related problems in a new Access 2007 format database containing only the default table, a query with the SQL below and a module containing only the code below, so I seriously doubt that this is a corruption issue.
First the following sub fails on the If Then line with Run-time error 5: Invalid procedure call or argument
Option Compare Database
Option Explicit
Sub checkStrCmp()
Dim str As String
str = "s"
If str = "s" Then
MsgBox "works"
End If
End Sub
If I change Option Compare Database to Option Compare Text the sub works as expected, but this seems like a bad idea as I may want to preform text as well as numeric comparisons inside a single sub.
I’m also getting “Invalid procedure call” errors in string comparison functions inside of SQL. The Replace function is requiring the supposedly optional compare parameter.
Select replace("foo-bar-baz", "-", "|", 1,-1);
Generates the “Invalid procedure call” error
Setting the compare parameter to any of the available values (0 -3) works as expected:
SELECT replace("foo-bar-baz", "-", "|", 1,-1, 0);
produces “foo|bar|baz”
Has anyone else seen this? Is there a setting that needs to be tweaked? Any other ideas outside of “Database corruption” which is all I’ve been able to find via Google.
TIA
apoligies for the sloppy code blocks I can't for the life of me get them to work right.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that I'm running XP Pro sp3.
The problem seems limited to databases I create on my box. When I opened the test database I created on my box from other workstations on our network I saw the issue, but was then unable to recreate it when creating a new database as described above on those workstations. The databases I created on the two other workstations (same OS and MS Office versions installed) also worked correctly when opened on my machine. I was also unable to recreate the issue when I inserted new modules in those DBs from my machine.
In short the problem seems to only exist on databases created on my machine (and in old 2003 format databases I've converted to 2007 format on my machine). My best guess is that my install is hosed but I’d like to have some idea of how and why before I approach IT with a request to reinstall Office. I’d also like to rule out a conflict with other software on my box.

Answer 1

Your code modules do not all need to share the same Option Compare setting. So you could place those procedures which should use text comparisons in a module which has Option Compare Text in its Declarations section.
However, I don't understand your statement, "I may want to preform text as well as numeric comparisons inside a single sub." According to Access' help topic, the Option Compare Statement is "Used at module level to declare the default comparison method to use when string data is compared". In other words, Option Compare has no effect on the comparisons of numeric values.
Edit: Since the problem is limited to Option Compare Database for database files created on only one machine, I'll suggest you check Access' "New database sort order" setting on that machine. Change it to a choice which starts with "General" if it is set to anything else. Then create a new database and see whether you still have the problem.
The reason for this suggestion is that Option Compare Database tells Access to use the database's codepage setting for sorting. And "New database sort order" can set the codepage to the one which never gives me such troubles. However, my understanding of codepage details is pretty shallow; I never change it and don't know what the consequences of other settings would be.