MS ACCESS Runtime: How many instances are installed?

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MS ACCESS Runtime: How many instances are installed?

Yelena Varshal

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September 28, 2005 at 8:58 am

#66702

Hello,
Could anyone confirm or reject the following statement:
I think have read an article about 6 month ago that starting with Office (2000 or XP, don't remember) only ONE instance of MS Access runtime is installed on the computer. So when you install the second MS Access Runtime application the second instance is not installed just the counter is incremented.
I can not find any references to the above statement now and I don't know if it is true. Please if someone have any information on the subject post a reference here.
Yelena
Regards,Yelena Varsha

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pg53 Ten Centuries Points: 1303 More actions · Answer 1

AFAIK this has always been the case, at least since Windows95 - the dll's are installed in the system directory and reference counted.

Yelena Varshal SSC-Dedicated Points: 34286 More actions · Answer 2

pg53,

Can you explain to me the following: we have Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP computers with Office 2000 with its standard installation under Program Files. The application with Access 97 Runtime was installed in the application folder and Runtime executable was in the subfolder of this folder. It worked somehow, but had problems. So I assume we had 2 instances of Runtime: one for Office 2000 and one for the Access 97 application. Then we updraded the app to Access 2000 and we are not installing Runtime anymore because Office 2000 is installed and it is a pre-requisite. Soon we will not require Office to be a prerequisite (new company requirement) so we would like to install Access Runtime as a part of the application again. I do worry if people who will run the application have different versions of Office or they have other versions of Runtime, how it will affect the system and how many problems we will have.

Thanks,

Yelena

Regards,Yelena Varsha

Mark Harr SSCrazy Eights Points: 9921 More actions · Answer 3

1) Depending on the installation method for the Access 97 application, it should not have installed Access 97 runtime if Access 2000 runtime was already installed. Proper installation programs (MS, InstallShield, Wise, etc) will check versions and not install an older version over a newer version (or even the same version). A bad installation program will copy files without checking versions.

2) You may have had some problems with your Access 97 application running with Access 2000 runtime. But there should not have been both Access 97 and Access 2000 runtime on the same machine.

3) When you upgraded the application to Access 2000, you could have included the Access runtime files. Again, a proper installation program will not overwrite a newer (or same) file.

4) If you add the Access 2000 runtime to your application installation, and it is installed on a machine with the same or newer version, the installation should skip your Access runtime installation. For instance, if the machine has Access 2003 on it, the Access 2000 runtime would not be installed, and your Access 2000 application should run well with the Access 2003 runtimes.

Mark

Yelena Varshal SSC-Dedicated Points: 34286 More actions · Answer 4

Thanks Mark.

Do I understand correctly that if we bundle the application with Access 2000 Runtime and it will be installing on the computers with any version of MS ACCESS - 2000, 2002, 2003 then it should not corrupt the system because it will not install 2000 Runtime. And you say it should run. But my experience is telling me that at least a couple of things are not running:

- A shortcut that has to be installed by the installer has to call the runtime and pass the credentials

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\MSACCESS.exe" "C:\Program Files\myapp\myapp.mdb" /runtime /user user /pwd "" /wrkgrp "C:\Program Files\myapp\myapp.mdw"

different versions of Office have different pathes: Office, Office10, Office11 under Microsoft Office. /runtime is used in the shortcut because as I say the current version of the app uses full version of MS Access 2000 that should act as a Runtime. It is the previous and the next versions that used /will use Runtime.

- Some other Office files are called to during the program execution

So I am worried that something will not work correctly. But if you say you do have good experience then probably I should just test the whole thing on different versions. Do you advise me to go with the least possible version for Runtime: I mean, 2000 so it would not overwrite other versions installd by Office or other apps?

Regards,Yelena Varsha