Install Access 97 and Office 2007 on Windows 7

Question

 
Hopefully this is a useful discussion for anyone wanting to run Access 97 on Windows 7 especially if the intention is to also load Office 2007
or 2010 in addition to Access 97.
I have successfully installed Access 97 SR-2 starting from the Office 97 Professional CD for SR-1.
The level of Windows 7 (64 bit Professional Version) was as installed on a new Dell machine in July 2010.
I then loaded Office 2007 as the main office system. As mentioned elsewhere the requirement to also load Access 97 is often dictated by the need to maintain
legacy applications which continue to be run very successfully at this level of software under Windows XP or similar.
The full procedure and list of problems overcome is as follows:-
1)    
Make a custom installation of Office 97 into an Office97 folder selecting only Access and its associated data utilities.
2)    
The error message CTL3D32.DLL not correctly installed – must be installed in the Windows System Directory can be ignored. Should find it is already in the
Windows\System32 directory.
3)    
If you now run the SR-2b update (SR2bOF97.EXE) for Office 97 it will fail unless you do the following:-
a.     
create two new temporary folders – say folder97 and foldersavefonts
b.     
copy the windows fonts relating to tahoma and comic (4 files) from \windows\fonts to foldersavefonts.
c.     
extract the files from SR2bOF97.EXE to folder97 using Winzip or similar.
d.     
select the four font files relating to Tahoma and comic and right click to then install these fonts in Windows 7.
e.     
if you do not do the above the SR-2 install fails because of a version problem with the fonts.
f.      
now run SR2bOF97.EXE in the normal way. It should be successful – if not the situation is different to mine and the log will need to be viewed to troubleshoot
the problem
g.     
finally go to foldersavefonts and install these fonts back into Windows 7.
4)    
It is now recommended to run the Jet3 patch
Jet35sp3.exe which can be downloaded from Microsoft.
5)    
At this point you should have a fully working Access 97 system. This procedure should also work for Word, Excel and Powerpoint but not Outlook.
6)    
Now install Office 2007/10 as required preferably a custom installation into an Office20xx folder.
7)    
If you have installed Access 20xx there will be a conflict between the Access 97 and 20xx installations. Both version work fine (ignore the message to rerun setup)
once loaded but Access 97 will need to be run with Administration permissions (right click the short cut and click administrator) after running Access 20xx. In a similar way Access 20xx will rerun its registration processes after running Access 97. This situation
occurs whenever you move between the versions unless you follow the following steps.
8)    
Load Access 20xx to ensure that it is registered.
9)    
Use notepad to create an empty file MSACCESS.SRG – suggest in folder97
10) 
find the Microsoft supplied MSACCESS.SRG – this is installed in the folder name specified in the custom install of Office 20xx. Rename this file to MSACCESS.SRG.SAV.
11) 
Copy in the empty MSACCESS.SRG from folder97 to replace the correct version.
12) 
This trick seems to prevent the conflict between Access 97 and Access 20xx. Remember if any reinstall work is needed for Office 20xx to reinstate the Microsoft
supplied version.
13)  There
is a documented problem
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproappcompat/thread/4f729cea-aafb-4d4a-b863-705a13de486a relating to a UAC issue but this seems to have been corrected in currently shipped builds of Window 7. If the problem does appear there
is a Microsoft supplied fix for the problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978591/
14) 
Finally, in case anyone needs to make a clean start in new folders. I have also found that the above procedures are still repeatable after standard uninstalls
of both Office 97 and Office 20xx
15) If ISAM problems occur with txt or .xls files it is likely that the .DLLs need to be manually registered. To do this use
the command line and type C:\windows\syswow64\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\syswow64\mstext35.dll. This will register mstext35.dll. Then type:- :\windows\syswow64\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\syswow64\msexcl35.dll. This will register msexcl35.dll
If anyone finds additional problems or information would be pleased to see them posted here.

Answer 1

Hi,
Thanks
for
sharing your effort and
experience in forums,.
Hope your information would help more community members facing the same situation.
Best Regards,
Alex zhao