Do you mean trying to make a connection from some front-end to a Jet
database that was created using Access 97? Yeah, that could be a problem.
Dave's already pointed you to one source of connection string information:
another is Carl Prothman's
http://www.carlprothman.net/Default.aspx?tabid=81
(specifically
http://www.carlprothman.net/Default.aspx?tabid=87#OLEDBProviderForMicrosoftJet
and
http://www.carlprothman.net/Default.aspx?tabid=90#ODBCDriverForAccess)
Now, for Jet databases created by Access 97, technically you should be using
the Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.3.51 Provider. The problem is, that provider only
got installed by MDAC 2.0. It's not really that big a deal, though: the
Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 Provider (intended for Jet databases created using
Access 2000 and newer) is backwards compatible, so it's capable of reading
Jet databases created by Access 97 as well (although I have heard some
reports of it being a little slower, due to it trying to do unnecessary
conversions to and from Unicode). However, MDAC 2.5 was the last version to
install any Jet drivers. That means depending on what operating system your
clients are on, if all you've installed is MDAC 2.8, you might very well
also have to install the Jet 4.0 Service Pack 8 specific to that operating
system. See
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/data/aa937730.aspx for
downloads.
