"Automatic Configuration of Access has failed" 2007 was working fi

[johnleb]

I download the office 2007 trial suite and installed no problem. Been working
on an Access/Excel project for the last 2 weeks. Tonight I closed access and
tried to run it again. The installation screen started, failed and then i
got the following message:

"Automatic Configuration of the current version of Microsoft Office Access
has failed. Your database might not function correctly. This can occur if
you do not have the necessary permissions to install Microsoft Access on this
computer"

I did have access 2003 open while I was copying vba code over from a prior
project. Any help greatly appreciated I'm dead in the water here and Google
brought no solution.

 

[Susan Ramlet]

As you can see from this article, the fact that the Windows Installer runs
is expected:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

The fact it fails is not. I believe what I would try is to uninstall the
Office 2007 Trial and the Activation Assistant, re-install Office 2003, then
try the Trial again.

Microsoft doesn't generally recommend or support multiple versions of Office
running on the same computer.

 

[johnleb]

As you requested Susan, I'm am replying here with the fix.

The issue at hand is caused by running access 2003 and 2007 simultaenously.
I was copying code from a prior project to the new one. What occurs is that
the 2003 /2007 versions overright each other's DLL's. It also damages the
de-installation procedure.

Neither version would de-install from the add/remove panel. Access 2007
failed to run at all. No problems running 2003.

The microsoft Office removal tool failed to work. The only way to roll
back 2007 is to use the procedure here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218/

I would advise a system restore point prior to starting since you'll be
editing the registry. Note that some files may not be found in the registry
keys after you use the manual uninstall method on the Uninstall folder. That
did not seem to matter.

After running the uninstall, stopping the source engine and removing 2007
folders, you have an extensive registry edit to do. Be advised that this
will knock out the 2003 uninstall from the Add/Remove programs.

Once regedits are complete, you reboot. Now you can attempt to uninstall
2003, which most likely will fail. Go to services and restart the installer
if it is stopped. Then pop in your 2003 disk and run repair. 2003 will
uninstall correctly at that point.

You can then re-install 2003, and upon completion install 2007 (make sure
you run service packs on each).

There is a note on running access 2003 in an xp/vista/7 virtual machine if
you need both. I haven't tried that yet. Other office programs seem to
co-exist fine. Any future work w/ legacy code will be imported into an
access 2007 db for that purpose.

The time for this fix was about 4.5 hours.