Runtime conflict access 97

[Derek]

I am told that there are conflicts between access runtime,
Access 97, Office 97 and a certain version of 2000 making
my developed product useless for anyone with these
products. Can anyone salvage two years of development from
This crazy situation. And are there any other time bombs
waiting there for my small company to flounder on??

Help!!!

Thanks.

 

[Derek]

Very comprehensive. Many thanks indeed.

-----Original Message-----


It's not quite that desparate.

Here is my general experience with the A97 Runtime.

If you install it on a PC with no version of Access everything is fine.

If you install it on a PC that already has Access 97 everything is usually still
fine, but if your version of Access was newer, your Runtime install will replace
their Access executable with your version and the registration information will
show that Access is registered to you instead of them. Is that a big deal?
Depends on the customer I guess.

If you install it on a PC that has a newer version of Access on it then things
get a bit stickier, but often this just means some undesireable behavior that
your users may or may not wish to tolerate. The most noticeable is that
whichever version of Access was launched last will take over the Windows file
associations for all Access files. This means that if they use your app and
then double-click one of their own Access files, Windows will attempt to use the
A97 executable to open it. This will usually then report that the file is
unrecognized because A97 is incapable of opening newer version files. If they
open their version of Access first, and then open their file, everything works
fine. You can also create shortcuts that will open particular files and
explicitly include the Access version to use. Since many people who have Access
installed on their PC have never even opened it, these issues might not even be
noticed.

Installing A97 runtime on a PC that started out with Office 97 and then was
upgraded to a newer version is a real problem. Your Runtime app won't install
or run properly. The Runtime installer tries to be intelligent enough to know
when it needs to install the Access executable. If it thinks A97 is already
present, then it will use the existing copy and not install it's own copy. PCs
where Office 97 was upgraded apparently fool the installer and it tries to use
the existing Access instance. Since that is now a newer version it may not be
able to open your file. Particularly if you distribute an MDE or use Access
Security.

Many of the above have work-arounds, but the wholesale solution (so I hear) is
to purchase the SageKey scripts that can be used to install your runtime app
with either Wise or InstallSheild installer programs. These supposedly install
your runtime app in a manner that "just works". You do have to be prepared to
dish out several hundred bucks for these additional programs though.


.

 

[Derek]

By the way where did you learn all this stuff?

-----Original Message-----


It's not quite that desparate.

Here is my general experience with the A97 Runtime.

If you install it on a PC with no version of Access everything is fine.

If you install it on a PC that already has Access 97 everything is usually still
fine, but if your version of Access was newer, your Runtime install will replace
their Access executable with your version and the registration information will
show that Access is registered to you instead of them. Is that a big deal?
Depends on the customer I guess.

If you install it on a PC that has a newer version of Access on it then things
get a bit stickier, but often this just means some undesireable behavior that
your users may or may not wish to tolerate. The most noticeable is that
whichever version of Access was launched last will take over the Windows file
associations for all Access files. This means that if they use your app and
then double-click one of their own Access files, Windows will attempt to use the
A97 executable to open it. This will usually then report that the file is
unrecognized because A97 is incapable of opening newer version files. If they
open their version of Access first, and then open their file, everything works
fine. You can also create shortcuts that will open particular files and
explicitly include the Access version to use. Since many people who have Access
installed on their PC have never even opened it, these issues might not even be
noticed.

Installing A97 runtime on a PC that started out with Office 97 and then was
upgraded to a newer version is a real problem. Your Runtime app won't install
or run properly. The Runtime installer tries to be intelligent enough to know
when it needs to install the Access executable. If it thinks A97 is already
present, then it will use the existing copy and not install it's own copy. PCs
where Office 97 was upgraded apparently fool the installer and it tries to use
the existing Access instance. Since that is now a newer version it may not be
able to open your file. Particularly if you distribute an MDE or use Access
Security.

Many of the above have work-arounds, but the wholesale solution (so I hear) is
to purchase the SageKey scripts that can be used to install your runtime app
with either Wise or InstallSheild installer programs. These supposedly install
your runtime app in a manner that "just works". You do have to be prepared to
dish out several hundred bucks for these additional programs though.


.

 

[Rick Brandt]

By the way where did you learn all this stuff?

Well I've been distributing the A97 Runtime in our company for several
years and for quite a few of those have had to deal with people who had
upgraded to Office 2000 or got new PCs with Office 2000 installed.
Other than that experience I picked up the rest right here in these
Newsgroups.