Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Problem installing Office 97 Professional SR2b patch in Vista

172 views
Skip to first unread message

Don

unread,
Mar 24, 2007, 5:02:36 PM3/24/07
to
QUESTIONS:
1. Has anyone figured out how to successfully install the Office 97
Pro Service Release 2 patch in Vista?
2. Has anyone successfully installed an Office 97 Pro CD (SR2
version) in Vista?


DETAILS:
My setup: Dell Inspiron notebook with Vista Business edition
My CD: Office 97 Professional (Service Release 1) Upgrade

I had no problems installing from the Office 97 CD. I ran the
setup.exe file on the CD "as administrator" with no errors.

When I tried to install Service Release 2b (SR2b) patch (again, as
administrator), the installation failed. Scanning the SR2b
installation log, I noticed the following lines that indicated
problems.

At the end of the "Access bucket file copy starts" section are the
lines:

* Move C:\Windows\Fonts\tahoma.ttf to C:\Windows\Fonts\sr1E639.tmp
* Unable to open C:\Windows\Fonts\tahoma.ttf
* sr2 patch fail

Under the following "Back up has started...." section are the lines:

* deleted C:\Windows\Fonts\tahoma.ttf
* unable to restore C:\Windows\Fonts\sr1E639.tmp to C:\Windows\Fonts
\tahoma.ttf
* Backup has finished.
* The patch has rollback the file copy due to either user cancelation
or problem w/ file copy. Your system has been restored to its orginal
state. If you did not cancel the file copy, please contact Microsoft
Technical Support to upgrade to Office 97 SR2.
* The sr2 patch has failed


UPGRADING TO A NEWER VERSION OF ACCESS: I understand that some will
suggest that we "buy a newer version". Besides the huge financial
investment required to upgrade all of our workstations (both hardware
and software/licenses), there's the multiple conversion steps involved
with moving our many Access projects to the newest versions (97 to
2000/2002/2003 then to 2007).
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/1dce641e-ba1c-446a-8ff2-221769a58ba51033.mspx?mfr=true)
I've also read that the later versions of Access are more buggy and
slower than the 97 version.

Office 97 meets our needs and has been working great. I just hope I
can get it to work in Vista (fingers crossed).

Allen Browne

unread,
Mar 24, 2007, 7:54:36 PM3/24/07
to
Don I have Access 97 installed on Vista Ultimate.
The CD was "Office 97 Upgrade." with SR1, and SR2 was applied afterwards.

From memory, I was logged in as an administrator and had UAC turned off at
the time I did these installs, but I did not use Run As Administrator on
setup.exe.

There was an installation flaw relating to another font, hatten.ttf:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=141373
Don't know if that's related to your issue at all.

If you are trying to run multiple versions of Vista, or you are not sure how
to disable UAC, see:
http://allenbrowne.com/bug-17.html

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia
Tips for Access users - http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html
Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

"Don" <donh...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1174770156.0...@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...

David W. Fenton

unread,
Mar 25, 2007, 8:20:32 AM3/25/07
to
"Allen Browne" <Allen...@SeeSig.Invalid> wrote in
news:4605ba3d$0$7435$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au:

> There was an installation flaw relating to another font,
> hatten.ttf:
> http://support.microsoft.com/?id=141373
> Don't know if that's related to your issue at all.

Hatten.ttf is *not* the cause of the problem. Renaming it only
triggers the *fix* when you re-run the install. There are probably
other files you could rename that would also trigger the installer
to properly run the second time, but MS chose Hatten.ttf for some
reason.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

Don

unread,
Mar 25, 2007, 3:02:38 PM3/25/07
to
On Mar 24, 6:54 pm, "Allen Browne" <AllenBro...@SeeSig.Invalid> wrote:

Thanks, Allen.

What a coincidence! When I wrote "I've also read that the later
versions of Access are more buggy and slower than the 97 version",
your (excellent) website was one place I'd read it.

The fact that you've managed to successfully install Office 97 in
Vista gives me some hope. I tried uninstalling, disabling UAC as you
suggested, and installing from scratch and got the same errors in the
SR2b log file. I even tried deleting hatten.ttf with no difference.
Surely there's a trick out there that I haven't discovered yet.

FWIW: When doing the initial Office 97 installation, I did a custom
install. I included everything except "Find Fast", the Office
Toolbar, and Outlook (which, I've read, doesn't work in Vista
anyway). I guess could try including Outlook in the installation,
although I can't imagine what difference that would make as far as the
service pack errors go.

Or maybe if I could locate an Office 97 Pro installaton disc with SR-2
included, that could be a solution. I imagine my registration codes
would work the same.

Anyway, if I'm forced to upgrade, it's good to know there's helpful
information like that on your website to ease the transition. I've
read that Microsoft will provide a runtime for Access 97 at no
charge. That could at least help reduce upgrade costs.


> Don I have Access 97 installed on Vista Ultimate.
> The CD was "Office 97 Upgrade." with SR1, and SR2 was applied afterwards.
>
> From memory, I was logged in as an administrator and had UAC turned off at
> the time I did these installs, but I did not use Run As Administrator on
> setup.exe.
>
> There was an installation flaw relating to another font, hatten.ttf:
> http://support.microsoft.com/?id=141373
> Don't know if that's related to your issue at all.
>
> If you are trying to run multiple versions of Vista, or you are not sure how
> to disable UAC, see:
> http://allenbrowne.com/bug-17.html
>
> --
> Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

> Tips for Access users -http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html


> Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.
>

> "Don" <donhy...@gmail.com> wrote in message

> >http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/1dce641e-ba1c-446a...)

Allen Browne

unread,
Mar 25, 2007, 7:35:31 PM3/25/07
to
Okay, Don. I can't tell you what I did that was different, but I installed
this before any other office versions. Did a custom install to a non-default
folder (named C:\Program Files\Office97.) Installed minimal options (just
Access with all its wizards and samples, but no Word, Excel, Outlook, etc,
and none of the Office options such as Graph, filters, spell check etc.)

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

Tips for Access users - http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html


Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

"Don" <donh...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1174849358....@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

bit...@gmail.com

unread,
Apr 10, 2007, 7:33:11 PM4/10/07
to
Any further news on this? I also tried a minimal custom Office 97
install with just Access and DAO. SR2b patch fails on font copy.

I guess it would be possible to script your own or manually update.

Allan, is your Vista an upgrade from XP?

Allen Browne

unread,
Apr 10, 2007, 9:22:26 PM4/10/07
to
No. If it makes any difference, my Vista was a new install on a new machine.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia
Tips for Access users - http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html
Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

<bit...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1176247991.9...@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

Don

unread,
Apr 10, 2007, 11:56:56 PM4/10/07
to
On Apr 10, 6:33 pm, bits...@gmail.com wrote:
> Any further news on this? I also tried a minimal custom Office 97
> install with just Access and DAO. SR2b patch fails on font copy.

I received an email with a possible solution. I'll post it after I've
had a chance to try it.

bit...@gmail.com

unread,
Apr 11, 2007, 6:54:37 AM4/11/07
to
After some playing about, I think I have a working solution (for me
anyway).

My setup:
-New install of Vista business.
-No other office version installed.
-UAC on (yeah, I know I'm a masochist)
-Office 97 Pro SR-1 CD
-Office 97 SR-2b file

Steps:
1. Install Office 97 SR-1 (ran setup.exe on CD as Administrator)
-Choosing only Access (all except replication) and 'Extra Fonts' in
office tools

2. Run the SR-2b file with command line switches /c and /t:<path to
extracted files>

3. Copy the vista version of the font files (comic.ttf, comicbd.ttf,
tahoma.ttf, tahomabd.ttf) to replace the SR-2b versions in the
extracted files from step 2.

4. Modified the filelist.txt file in the extracted SR2b and removed
references to the 4 font files (in step 3) from the [Access] section.

5. Ran sr2patch.exe from the extracted SR2b as Administrator.

Hope this helps!


Don

unread,
Apr 12, 2007, 4:23:07 PM4/12/07
to
Any particular reason for not selecting "replication"?

Don

unread,
Apr 30, 2007, 5:11:58 PM4/30/07
to
Sorry for the delay. Been quite busy lately. Here's an update on my
progress. See my notes below (between the steps of a solution
provided by "bits...@gmail")

On Apr 11, 5:54 am, bits...@gmail.com wrote:

> After some playing about, I think I have a working solution (for me
> anyway).
>
> My setup:
> -New install of Vista business.
> -No other office version installed.
> -UAC on (yeah, I know I'm a masochist)
> -Office 97 Pro SR-1 CD
> -Office 97 SR-2b file

My setup is identical.

> Steps:
> 1. Install Office 97 SR-1 (ran setup.exe on CD as Administrator)
> -Choosing only Access (all except replication) and 'Extra Fonts' in
> office tools

As mentioned in a previous post, I included everything in Office 97


except "Find Fast", the Office

Toolbar, and Outlook (which, I've read, doesn't work in Vista -- plus
we don't use it anyway).

> 2. Run the SR-2b file with command line switches /c and /t:<path to
> extracted files>

Done. I dumped the extracted file into a new folder I named "_sp2-
Fix".

> 3. Copy the vista version of the font files (comic.ttf, comicbd.ttf,
> tahoma.ttf, tahomabd.ttf) to replace the SR-2b versions in the
> extracted files from step 2.

Did this too, although I wasn't sure why. The next step would
seemingly make it unnecessary.

> 4. Modified the filelist.txt file in the extracted SR2b and removed
> references to the 4 font files (in step 3) from the [Access] section.

I removed references to the 4 font files in *ALL* sections ([Excel],
[word97], etc.).

> 5. Ran sr2patch.exe from the extracted SR2b as Administrator.

...and it ran with no errors! Thanks!! (NOTE: This file will be in
the folder where you extracted the files in step 2)

I still haven't had time to test anything (particularly Access) to any
significant degree, (particularly on a network) but so far, so good.
The only problems I've had were:

* Errors about a missing Reference Library which I simply disabled in
Access using "Tools" > "References" while in module editing mode. I
*think* the Library had something to do with a utility for printing
out the database Relationships that was somehow referenced by one of
my projects.

* I couldn't open the Office 97 Help files until I installed the "old"
WIndows Help system which is discussed here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607/en-us
... and available for download here:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82148

If I notice any other oddities or gotchas, I'll post them here.

--Don

P.S. My thanks to "Robin" who sent me a similar solution.

Don

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 8:29:42 PM6/3/07
to
UPDATE: I received an email directly from "Viejo" with another
installation variation. Here's his solution:

==================
I know you found a resolution, but it didn't work for me. I found
another one (worked OK), which doesn't involve selecting at the SR-1
stage, nor modifications of any file. And if you'd like to share it
with the forums please feel free.

1. Install Office 97 SR-1.

2. Run the SR-2b patch with command line switches /c and /t:<full path
to where the extracted files will go>

3. Save away the 4 Vista fonts: Go to \Windows\Fonts and copy the
Vista version of the font files (comic.ttf, comicbd.ttf, tahoma.ttf,
tahomabd.ttf) to a \SAVE directory.

4. "Install" the 4 SR2b fonts: Go to where the extracted files from
the patch are, and select the four .ttf files. Right-click and select
"INSTALL". Reply YES to the prompt to replace the Vista fonts.

5. Ran sr2patch.exe from the extracted SR2b as Administrator.

6. Restore the Vista fonts: Go to the \SAVE directory, select the
Vista .ttf files, right-click and select "INSTALL". Reply YES to the
prompt to replace the current (SR2b) fonts.

As I said above the other solution didn't work for me. I didn't like
the selecting involved in SR1, and SR2 just hung forever. Fiddling
with the filelist.txt file was time-consuming.

My guess is that with Vista Microsoft has changed the internal
structure of the fonts, and SR2b doesn't know how to handle this. By
using the previous-styled fonts now SR2b knows how to manipulate them
and succeed in installing itself. Then, it's just a question of
restoring the original Vista fonts.

Best regards,

Viejo.
==================


0 new messages