Access 2007 Runtime SP2

[Sue B]

I have not worked too much with Access Runtimes. But I have a few users - some local and some across the country - that have my Access 2007 accdr application running. My problem is that I don't know how to update their systems with the new SP 2 runtime that was released this spring. They are running into problems with the application updates that I am sending them and I think that installing SP2 might help them.

Some threads say that you have to uninstall the old runtime and then install the new runtime. I am not keen on talking these users thru uninstalling. Is there a simpler way?

Thank you for any help that you can give me.

 

[Alisa]

Have they tried going to the windows update site? That should automatically detect and install whatever it is that they need . . .

 

[Sue B]

Thank you, I will try that.

 

[Sue B]

That does seem to work, thank you!

I have to say that I am having a terrible time with the Runtime. All kinds of things have fallen apart in my project in the last 2 months. What a headache.

 

[Alisa]

That does seem to work, thank you!

I have to say that I am having a terrible time with the Runtime. All kinds of things have fallen apart in my project in the last 2 months. What a headache.

I know, the runtime is a total PITA. Good luck!

 

[boblarson]

I know, the runtime is a total PITA. Good luck!

But we can at least be thankful that we don't have to pay for it anymore. It is still a pain, but at least a free pain where before you had the privilege to pay for a pain.

 

[Sue B]

Well, I don't feel that I can charge my clients for changing code that worked 2 months ago, but now doesn't work because Microsoft changed something. So it is costing me plenty. In fact, I am thinking about downgrading the whole project back to Access 2003 to get a more stable platform.

 

[boblarson]

back to Access 2003 to get a more stable platform.

You must have a short memory because they screwed things up royally with 2003 SP3 and they still don't have anything but hotfixes out there to fix all of those problems.

 

[Alisa]

Obviously this is a subjective judgement, but I think that is really feature specific. I think there are many people, including myself, who would agree that moving to 2007 broke a lot of things that worked in 2003. Yeah, they messed a few things up in SP3, but personally I would say that 2003 SP3 is way less f*** up overall than 2007.

 

[Sue B]

Bummer. Not what I wanted to hear.

 

[Sue B]

So, what do you do with your projects when bits and pieces suddenly quite working?

During the last 2 months, in 2 projects that worked fine before that, I have found issues with: adding records to internal tables, and with picking up the table def of an internal table, also with creating a query def on the fly. And one of the projects now prints the report parameter screen instead of the report that is being previewed when the user hits the print button.

 

[shadow9449]

Obviously this is a subjective judgement, but I think that is really feature specific. I think there are many people, including myself, who would agree that moving to 2007 broke a lot of things that worked in 2003. Yeah, they messed a few things up in SP3, but personally I would say that 2003 SP3 is way less f*** up overall than 2007.

Hey, I just had this same conversation in another thread a few hours ago

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=177829

If you want a good laugh about Microsoft "progress" with regard to "upgrades", check out this screenshot I've attached. I mistakenly allowed my PC to upgrade to IE 8 which takes almost 10 seconds to open a browser page (firefox opens immediately) and the hilarious part is how it's being touted on Yahoo as being "optimized" for Yahoo where it messes up the Yahoo page whereas IE 7 will show the whole page perfectly as will Firefox.


SHADOW

 

[boblarson]

So, what do you do with your projects when bits and pieces suddenly quite working?

Just work through each issue, while reminding your clients that Microsoft has made changes which has broken things. I know it is a relationship nightmare and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with that aspect of it. But in the end, if things break, we try to get help to fix them (if we can't fix them ourselves) and continue on. You could try billing MS for it but I doubt you'd get anywhere with it. Is it fair? No - it isn't. They should have to compensate you for the extra time you have to take to fix the issues, even though it was their fault. That is a pain.

If you can't have things breaking, then perhaps you will have to go to a previous version where you can have relative safety; where updates are not going to happen because they've outlived their lifecycle. There are definite tradeoffs that will occur for any decision. Ultimately you have to figure out what works, is it worth the risk to upgrade, and do I need the new functionality given that some old functionality may be lost?

So, anyway, perhaps you should go to a previous version but you would likely need to go with 2000 because 2002 sucked wind and 2003 still has the possibility of another service pack to fix things which could break stuff.

 

[Alisa]

So, what do you do with your projects when bits and pieces suddenly quite working?

Tell your clients to never ever upgrade again?

 

[Sue B]

I just solved one of my problems. I couldn't add a new record to an internal table (a temp scratch pad), turns out that the default setting for one of the fields (Date()) was causing the problem. The problem only shows up on my client's machine. When I run the accdr on my machine the error doesn't show. I took out the default setting, and put the value in manually when I do the .addnew, and now it works fine.

Thanks for the commiseration!