Running 97 and 2000 on the same machine

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A client has requested both an Access 97 and a 2000 version of a database. Does anyone know a simple way to run both on a single machine or a good source of info on how to do this?

I have two hard disks so they could installed on different physical disks but would this mean two versions of windows?

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try the knowledge base article
Q241141 – ACC2000: How to Install Access 97 and Access 2000 on the Same Computer
it should give you all the information you need

JerryC

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Are you talking about installing both versions of Access on the same machine (not hard) or about installing both runtime versions of the application on the same machine? What version(s) of Office is the client running? I’ve found that an Access 97 runtime on an Office 2000 machine is problematic–it runs on some and not on others, no matter what you do.

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You are right about the runtime files for 97 and 2000 being a mess to deal with on the same machine. We ended up shelling out some $$$ to get some install scripts for the Wise Installation system from Sagekey to avoid it completely. Their scripts install the runtime files for 97 and 2000 in their own directories with their own registry entries etc. Since I started using them I have had NO problems. http://www.sagekey.com/index.htm

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Don’t forget with two versions installed a double click on an mdb file in explorer won’t necessarily start the correct version of Access for that database. It will start the last used version so you may need to use shortcuts rather than the quick way. Also after running Access 97 the next start of Access 2000 will take longer as it adjusts various settings to it’s satisfaction.
Otherwise I experience no problems here on my development machine with a mix of Office 97 and Office 2000 components.

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What an excellent and quick response.

Thanks to All especially JerryC, I should have looked the the obvious place first, it’s exactly what I need.

Thanks for the warning about the run time versions I will have to create some of these later.

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The easiest way to deal with that problem is to create a Send To shortcut for each version of Access. The Send To folder lives in different places on different versions of Windows, but the principle is the same. Then instead of double clicking on a database file, just right click it and select the Send To for the appropriate version.

You do have to be careful creating the shortcut though, because you have to include a replaceable parameter so that it knows to open the database and not just to start Access. Here’s an example from my machine:

“D:Program FilesOffice2KOfficeMSACCESS.EXE” “%1”

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