Problem installing Access 97 with Windows XP - "error occurred changing the workgroup database"

[richard]

I have a licensed MS Office 97 package which I have moved from PC to PC
over the years and I have just bought a new machine with XP Pro on it,
the latest release. When I install Office, I get the error "an error
occurred at changing the workgroup database" and "setup couldn't create a
system.mdw file....run the workgroup administrator before you run this
appliaction (-1011). When I run the workgroup administrator (something I
have never had to do before) it simply tries to remake this file and the
first error appears again.

The rest of Office installs fine. When I try to launch Access, I get the
message "microsoft access couldn't find the file .../system.mdw. This
file is required for startup" (path removed for brevity).

It worked fine on my last machine, which ran XP Pro Service Pack 2
(2002). And when I look for a file system.mdw on that machine, there is
none there.

Can anyone help me with this?

TIA.

[Tim Marshall]

richard wrote:

It worked fine on my last machine, which ran XP Pro Service Pack 2
(2002). And when I look for a file system.mdw on that machine, there is
none there.

I had this vexing problem last Fall. From what I can gather on posts
vaguely related to this issue since my porblem, is there is a problem
when you've got more than 512 megs of RAM on the machine that causes this.

Quite simply, if you're getting this error, XP is not allowing Access to
create a system.mdw in the windows/system32. What I did was turn off
the read only property for this directory and then select everything
inside the directory and do the same. I believe I was then able to
create a system.mdw file in there using the workgroup administrator.

If that doesn't work, you can do what I did for a while, which was to
use the workgroup administrator to create a system.mdw somewhere lee
besides windows/system32. I plopped it right into my main directory
where I kept my A97 apps.

BTW, I did not have this problem on my XP machine until after I
installed Access 2003.

--
Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
^o<
/#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
/^^ "Whatcha doin?" - Ditto "TIM-MAY!!" - Me

[richard]

In article <d3**********@coranto.ucs.mun.ca>,
TI****@PurplePandaChasers.Moertherium opined thusly:

richard wrote:

It worked fine on my last machine, which ran XP Pro Service Pack 2
(2002). And when I look for a file system.mdw on that machine, there is
none there.

I had this vexing problem last Fall. From what I can gather on posts
vaguely related to this issue since my porblem, is there is a problem
when you've got more than 512 megs of RAM on the machine that causes this.

Quite simply, if you're getting this error, XP is not allowing Access to
create a system.mdw in the windows/system32. What I did was turn off
the read only property for this directory and then select everything
inside the directory and do the same.

Thanks for this tip - but I find that XP automaticallt sets all folders back
to read-only. However I can make folders and files OK so I made a dummy
system.mdw file in a directory c:\temp and attempted to have the workgroup
manager overwrite it with the correct file, but the same error message just
keeps showing up. Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

[Tim Marshall]

richard wrote:

Thanks for this tip - but I find that XP automaticallt sets all folders back
to read-only. However I can make folders and files OK so I made a dummy
system.mdw file in a directory c:\temp and attempted to have the workgroup
manager overwrite it with the correct file, but the same error message just
keeps showing up. Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

What I did was similar, except after turing read only off of everything
INSIDE system32 I just dragged the system.mdw to system32.

--
Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
^o<
/#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
/^^ "What's UP, Dittoooooo?" - Ditto

[richard]

In article <d3**********@coranto.ucs.mun.ca>,
TI****@PurplePandaChasers.Moertherium says...

richard wrote:

Thanks for this tip - but I find that XP automaticallt sets all folders back
to read-only. However I can make folders and files OK so I made a dummy
system.mdw file in a directory c:\temp and attempted to have the workgroup
manager overwrite it with the correct file, but the same error message just
keeps showing up. Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

What I did was similar, except after turing read only off of everything
INSIDE system32 I just dragged the system.mdw to system32.

OK thanks, I copied my system.mdw from another machine, and now I'm free of
this error, but I'm getting an "out of memory" error when I launch Access. I
have 2GB and nothing running! Aby ideas on that?

thanks.

[Tim Marshall]

richard wrote:

OK thanks, I copied my system.mdw from another machine, and now I'm free of
this error, but I'm getting an "out of memory" error when I launch Access. I
have 2GB and nothing running! Aby ideas on that?

Unfortunately not, I haven't come across this error myself. However, it
does sound familiar - I'd google this group and/or look through the
knowledgebase articles at MS.

Cop out answer, sorry. 8(

--
Tim http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/
^o<
/#) "Burp-beep, burp-beep, burp-beep?" - Quaker Jake
/^^ "Whatcha doin?" - Ditto "TIM-MAY!!" - Me