jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sun Mar 13 21:58:15 CDT 2011
I am trying to get an Access 2007 runtime to run reliably anywhere I install it. I had a Windows 2003 virtual machine hanging around so I cleaned Office off of it, and I installed the runtime. I got the directory path declared a safe location and voila, the application ran. Full of confidence I installed Hamachi, the runtime package and the app on a friend's (rather old) XP and it doesn't run. I dug out my old dev machine which it appears that I wiped and installed XP on some time ago. I installed Hamachi, got it on the VPN for this database etc. I then installed the runtime there and tried to run. No go. Of course the runtime doesn't report errors or at least reliably. So I built a little test version with just a single table and an autoform which automatically opened when the app opened. It actually reported that it couldn't talk to the odbc native sql driver (not the exact words of course). So I started Googling and soon discovered that this driver is installed by SQL Server as it installs. However an installer called sqlncli.msi is out there for download. I downloaded that and tried to run. No joy. I turned the machine off, and ran a network cable so it is directly on my network and voila, it runs. I then disabled the cable so that it is connecting to my network via my wireless and it runs. So it appears that the SQL driver is not installed as part of XP, which makes sense since this is SQL Server 2008 Express version I am connecting to. However I would have expected this odbc SQL driver to be part of the Access 2007 runtime, but it seems not. It does appear that a download / install / reboot of the machine will allow me to hook up to the sql server instance. So I am now running Hamachi, joined to this specific network, with the sqlncli.msi installer installing the ODBC SQL Server native driver, plus the Access 2007 runtime, running the full on app, hitting the sql server over the vpn on 5.203.167.79 (the Hamachi IP for the server). And it works on this machine of mine. Now I have to install the SQL Server drivers on the friend's old machine (also running XP but on 512 megs of ram) and ensure that will run. -- John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com