Access 2003 and 2007 installation fight

[H. Martins]

I had Access 2003 installed and yesterday I added Access 2007 (keeping
2003) so that I could get AccessRuntimeOnly code running matters by
generating MDE under 2007.

Now, everytime I run 2003 it 'configures' as if it would be
installing. Then I can use 2003 without 'configuring' until I rum
2007. Them 2007 'configures'. If later i run 2003 it 'configures
again.

Seems there is some fight between both versions.

I suppose this detail should be sorted out before continuing.

Can I have some help, please?

Thanks
Henry

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Sorry, that's the way it is. Office 2007 uses a very different architecture
than previous versions, and there's apparently no way to avoid the issue.

Make sure you've installed SP1 for Office 2007: it at least minimizes the
time it takes to switch.

 

[H. Martins]

Doug,

I will uninstall 2007 from this machine, install it in another machine
not having 2003 and use VNC until fuzzy matters are sorted out.

Thanks.
Henry.

 

[Mark Andrews]

Can anyone get Microsoft to resolve this issue for Access 2010?
Especially if someone wants to create a product with the runtime (and have
it not interfere with the user's current software).

Hoping someone has some connections,
Mark

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

As I said, because the architectures used for the newer versions of Office
are so different than the previous ones, Microsoft says it's not solvable.

OTOH, I've heard rumours that SageKey has a solution. Note that I'm not
associated with SageKey, and have never tried the product.
http://www.sagekey.com/installation_access.aspx

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Especially if someone wants to create a product with the runtime (and have
it not interfere with the user's current software).

Another potential solution is to keep your app in A2003 format and if
the user is already running A2007 retail or runtime then don't install
your runtime.

Sample inno script which checks to see if a version of Access is
installed. If not it tells you to install a runtime version of
Access. If installed then it continues to install your FE MDE and
other assorted files.'
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.access/msg/10e3fc9234660872?hl=en

Sample inno script which "wraps" the package wizard install into a
single .exe
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.ms-access/msg/4aa1b33a191bf1f8?hl=en

Deploying updates to your software in a Runtime environment for Access
2007
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/RunTime/InstallExample.htm

See Jeff Conrad's page How do I get my existing legacy menu bars and
toolbars to work in Access 2007? Right now they all show up on the
Add-Ins tab. http://accessjunkie.com/faq_31.aspx

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

 

[Mark Andrews]

I have the sagekey product but haven't used it yet. I think it just
installs the runtime normally as if you were ruinning the regular EXE (not
positive)? I'll start using it soon.

If Sagekey has a solution, perhaps they could tell Microsoft?

Hoping Access2010 won't interfere with Access2007 (then by 2015 when
everyone is upgraded to 2007
we will be ok). Of course I'll be on a beach in Hawaii and won't care by
then (hopefully).

Mark

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I have the sagekey product but haven't used it yet. I think it just
installs the runtime normally as if you were ruinning the regular EXE (not
positive)? I'll start using it soon.

Yes, it does install a runtime but not normally. Indeed their install
is so "abnormal" it has nothing to do with any current installs of
Access.

If Sagekey has a solution, perhaps they could tell Microsoft?

The MS product group is well aware of Sagekey's existence. However
I suspect, but do not know. that the MS Access product group focus on
their core product. MS is happy to allow others to fill perceived
gaps for which the others are willing to spend many hours developing,
testing and supporting.

For example Rick Fishers Find and Replace or my Auto FE Updater.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

 

[Mark Andrews]

That gives me hope, that Sagekey has possibly found a solution and I can
develop an application using the access runtime 2007 and end users can
install it and it doesn't affect how they use any existing Access2003 or
earlier apps.

Still would like Microsoft to fix this issue for Access2010 (if anyone has
any pull),
Mark

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

That gives me hope, that Sagekey has possibly found a solution and I can
develop an application using the access runtime 2007 and end users can
install it and it doesn't affect how they use any existing Access2003 or
earlier apps.

Sagekey have claimed they do this with versions and I've read a number
of postings in the newsgroups happy with Sagekey products. I also
don't recall reading any negative postings about Sagekey so that's
says a lot right there.

Still would like Microsoft to fix this issue for Access2010 (if anyone has
any pull),

Extremely unlikely because MS starts up whatever version of Access is
currently registered to work with the MDB/ACCDB/etc extension. If
you explicitly start a different version then Access does whatever it
must do to reregister the extension with that version of Access. Of
course in A2007 this took a lot longer for whatever reasons.

I can't see MS changing this default behavior and if it's not there by
now in A2010, which I doubt it is, MS aren't going to be changing this
in A2010.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Extremely unlikely because MS starts up whatever version of Access is
currently registered to work with the MDB/ACCDB/etc extension. If
you explicitly start a different version then Access does whatever it
must do to reregister the extension with that version of Access. Of
course in A2007 this took a lot longer for whatever reasons.

I believe it's far more than simply changing the extension registration. I
recall Clint saying something about the installation mechanism for Office
2007 being completely different, so that there were a lot of other registry
keys that had to be tweaked.

I can't see MS changing this default behavior and if it's not there by
now in A2010, which I doubt it is, MS aren't going to be changing this
in A2010.

Especially since Microsoft doesn't recommend installing multiple versions...

 

[David W. Fenton]

Especially since Microsoft doesn't recommend installing multiple
versions...

Well, you know, they have a lot of Access developers out there who
*must* run multiple versions.

And they should pay more attention to the needs of their developers.

I'd spend more time poking around in A2007 if doing so didn't make
my paying work in A2003 annoying and slower.

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Well, you know, they have a lot of Access developers out there who
*must* run multiple versions.

And they should pay more attention to the needs of their developers.

I'd spend more time poking around in A2007 if doing so didn't make
my paying work in A2003 annoying and slower.

I suspect their answer would be "That's what Virtual PC is for".

 

[David W. Fenton]

I suspect their answer would be "That's what Virtual PC is for".

Well, I don't have enough disk space for that. Nor probably enough
RAM and CPU cycles.

Nor should I have to pay extra or have to muck around configuring
the damned thing.

There is simply no reason whatsoever why they have to set it up the
way they do. They do it for their own convenience, not for the users
or developers.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Well, I don't have enough disk space for that. Nor probably enough
RAM and CPU cycles.

I bought an external 2.5" hard drive to run the VHDs on for testing
purposes, especially the Auto FE Updater. Trouble is it's a 160 Gb
and I've run out of room. I'll pick up a 500 Gb drive "soon". One
key is to change a setting in Windows to cache the hard drive writes.
Albert Kallal states that makes a huge difference.

I did add more RAM so now I have 2.5 Gb in my laptop. I can squeeze
in two virtual sessions so long as they're set to about 500 or 600 Mb
each which usually isn't a problem.

I specifically purchased this laptop almost four years ago because it
had a dual core CPU. This way one runs the VHD and the other for
whatever I want to do the in guest system.

With the combination of the VHD running on a second USB hard drive and
lots of RAM and the 2nd CPU I don't notice any slowdown when a guest
OS is booting or saving/restore memory states. The system stays quite
snappy.

Note that I create a VHD for a given OS and get all the patches and an
anti virus installed. Then I make a copy of the VHD and install the
version of Office I want to work with. Then I make another copy and
muck with the 2nd copy all I want. Once I've got it mangled up with
too many installs, etc, etc. I delete it and make a copy of VHD with
Office.

If I want to test an Access runtime install then I make a copy of the
starter system without Office on it.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Well, I don't have enough disk space for that. Nor probably enough
RAM and CPU cycles.

Nor should I have to pay extra or have to muck around configuring
the damned thing.

There is simply no reason whatsoever why they have to set it up the
way they do. They do it for their own convenience, not for the users
or developers.

I hear you (although Virtual PC is free)

 

[David W. Fenton]

I bought an external 2.5" hard drive to run the VHDs on for
testing purposes, especially the Auto FE Updater. Trouble is it's
a 160 Gb and I've run out of room. I'll pick up a 500 Gb drive
"soon". One key is to change a setting in Windows to cache the
hard drive writes. Albert Kallal states that makes a huge
difference.

You can run it from an external drive? I didn't realize that. I
guess I was thinking more about booting the image rather than
running it in a VM. I got a 1TB firewire drive just in the last
couple of months and have copied all my accumulated data over to it
and still have 775GBs free (!!!).

I did add more RAM so now I have 2.5 Gb in my laptop.

I'm maxed out at 2GBs.

I can squeeze
in two virtual sessions so long as they're set to about 500 or 600
Mb each which usually isn't a problem.

Well, I guess I should give it a try, but, well, why should I have
to do this? Why can't they just make their apps co-exist with each
other?

I specifically purchased this laptop almost four years ago because
it had a dual core CPU. This way one runs the VHD and the other
for whatever I want to do the in guest system.

I have only a single core, and it's relatively slow in terms of
clock speed in comparison to the dual-core CPUs, so I'd likely not
be able to run two of them.

With the combination of the VHD running on a second USB hard drive
and lots of RAM and the 2nd CPU I don't notice any slowdown when a
guest OS is booting or saving/restore memory states. The system
stays quite snappy.

I doubt that would be the case for me.

Note that I create a VHD for a given OS and get all the patches
and an anti virus installed. Then I make a copy of the VHD and
install the version of Office I want to work with. Then I make
another copy and muck with the 2nd copy all I want. Once I've got
it mangled up with too many installs, etc, etc. I delete it and
make a copy of VHD with Office.

I'm not sure the amount of time it would take for me to do this
would be worth it.

If I want to test an Access runtime install then I make a copy of
the starter system without Office on it.

What's the cost for the VHD system? What do you use for that?

 

[David W. Fenton]

I hear you (although Virtual PC is free)

I'd like to try it but when Googling the only MS site I can get to
is all about running Virtual PC on Win7. I'm running WinXP and will
be for the foreseeable future (I don't have the time to rebuild my
systm in order to install Win7, though it's awfully tempting).

Boy, it's very hard to find any information on this. I finally went
through the Wikipedia article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC) and found that I
needed Virtual PC 2007:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-319
9-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

Of course, there's a Service Pack, so I'm downloading that, too. I
can't tell if it will install without the non-SP installed, but I'll
try it first.

This should all be a lot easier, it seems to me. MS's insistence on
promoting their current products would not be so bad if they didn't
completely obscure support for older products (the Office site is
bad for that, too, but at least provides front-page links to earlier
Office versions).

Dunno when I'll have the patience to actually do something with
this, though!

 

[Mike Painter]

Well, I guess I should give it a try, but, well, why should I have
to do this? Why can't they just make their apps co-exist with each
other?

Decisions made when having more than 640k was a big deal.

The only real solution would be to start over and offer two paths.
One for yesterday, and one for now and the future.
They could follow the IBM model and offer support for both until all but a
few of the cows come home. I can remember a client who refused to switch
from Displaywriters for many, many years. When it started costing him more
than the machines were worth for a tech to just show up, he switched.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

You can run it from an external drive? I didn't realize that. I
guess I was thinking more about booting the image rather than
running it in a VM. I got a 1TB firewire drive just in the last
couple of months and have copied all my accumulated data over to it
and still have 775GBs free (!!!).

Excellent. I should also add that once the VM is running I haven't
noticed any performance problems while in the VM either. Mind you I
don't do a lot in it. Just basic testing.

I'm maxed out at 2GBs.

My next laptop will have 4 or more Gb of RAM.

Well, I guess I should give it a try, but, well, why should I have
to do this? Why can't they just make their apps co-exist with each
other?

<shrug>

I also do this for testing runtime installs and such.

I have only a single core, and it's relatively slow in terms of
clock speed in comparison to the dual-core CPUs, so I'd likely not
be able to run two of them.

Probably not.

I'm not sure the amount of time it would take for me to do this
would be worth it.

Fair enough but given that I also need to test the Auto FE Updater
thoroughly well ...

What's the cost for the VHD system? What do you use for that?

I see you already located info on Virtual PC. Also note though that
there are rules on OS EULA inside the VPC sessions. As MVPs get MSDN
Universal this isn't a problem for me.

But as an alternative
https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/programoverview/40013779

"The download-only version costs $299 plus tax per year. "
https://partner.microsoft.com/US/program/managemembership/actionpack

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/