Access 97 (full and runtime) in Vista

[sbarron76]

Good day. I am currently researching the Vista O/S in regards to MS Access. Currently the company I work for uses MS Access 97 on either Win XP or Win 2000. The discussions are on going on whether to upgrade to Vista. Given the fact that i work for the company that employees a number in the thousands, this would be a gigantic change to say the least. We have some users using the full version while the majority have Access 97 runtime for NT or XP on their machines. I have seen posts from DB Gurus explaining that the full version should be ok on Vista (w/o running multiple versions) But what about Access 97 Runtime? Are there any issues or does it function the same as the full version?

Any advise/info/links would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

[pks00]

Blimey for a large company, Access 97 still being used.

I remember asking a similar question sometime ago. My suggestion was upgrade office because Access 97 is not supported by Microsoft when running on Vista. There is a MS page on this but I cant remember.

For a large company, I dont think its wise to run unsupported products.

[sbarron76]

Yes still in the Access 97 world. Hell we just upgraded all our machines to XP from NT 2 years ago, and still have a bunch of 2000 machines. So yeah, the company is behind the times just a bit. With Acces, the reason it is still 97, is because all of our db's were created there or in 2.0 and there is a great fear in upgrading and losing some of these precious DB's. Plus costs of course.

thanks for the info, i do agree, i don't like the idea of using an unsupported app either.

[pks00]

Problem with unsupported apps is if anything scrws up in Vista, u will end up with data loss and more complications

I found the link from MS http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932087

My recommendation is to create a plan of upgrading., You can try one database at a time and gradually upgrade all. Each plan must include a recovery just in case things mess up.
Im not sure of the path of upgrading A97 to A2003 or something, it might be better to upgrade to Office 2000 which is the next version up from A97.
Plus its supported by Vista.

Not sure of costs though

[lotus1]

I have a similar problem, though I am with a very small company.

I have about 10 machines that range from Windows ME to XP Pro. I just got my first Vista machine on the network, and I cannot access the access database.

The command line that all of the computers use is:

"C:\Program Files\Access 97 Runtime\msaccess.exe" /excl /runtime /user "Manager1" /wrkgrp "\\amas_server\AMAS2000\amas2000.mdw" "C:\AMAS2000\AMAS2000.MDE"

But when I run this from Vista, I get a blank database from my C: drive, rather than the one that the rest of the computers get.

What sort of options do I have? Is it possible to get this to run on my Vista Machine?

[missinglinq]

ACC2000 is generally considered to be the buggiest version in the app's history, with the possible exception of the short-lived Access95. IF it was me, I'd move to ACC2003.

Allen Browne, the "Wonder from Down Under" has some excellent white papers on upgrading from version to version on his site:

Upgrading

Scroll way down to near the bottom to the Upgrading heading.

As to the Vista OS, basically it doesn't like any version of Access! I believe if you noodle around Allen's page (which you ought to do; it's got some great hacks and articles) you'll find a sidebar on the right titled Windows Vista bugs! Read this very carefully, as I believe there are some very nasty things that can occur!

As for large companies still using Access 97, what you have to take into account is that the more users in a company, the higher the cost of upgrading! It's what put the $$$$$$$$$$ in Micro$oft!

People working for hi-tech companies would be absolutely amazed if they knew the thousands and thousands of companies that are still running DOS-based software! It's the single biggest reason that you can still buy non-USB connect printers!

Welcome to TheScripts, sbarron76 and lotus1!

Linq ;0)>