Try the former, if it fails then it's the permissions on your access
database. The permissions need to be Readable, Writable, Delete but
NOT Executable. If you make it executable by the IUSR_* account then
ADO will try to lock the Access database which is not what you want in
an ASP script.
If you want to be able to do the latter I think you need to open the
recordset with some peculiar options. Other people said they've sent
examples so those may help. I always just do UPDATE statements.
greg