Old Access 2002 runtime application will not run when virtualized.

Question

I have a client that uses an old Access 2002 runtime application. It uses a split Access database system on a Windows 2003 server. The developer has long since gone out of business and they cannot get it recompiled. We tried to update to newer version of access, but it uses unsupported commands it seems.

Because this application is business critical, we decided to virtualize the server and protect it. After virtualization, the application fails to run. It will lock at the same point and give an error "too many resources used". Task manager shows MSACCESS.EXE running and slowly using more memory until it errors out. We tried Hyper-V 2022/2019/2012R2. Same result. We also tried Proxmox host, same error at same point. We have also built a fresh 2003 server on newer hardware and copied application to it. It runs fine on non-virtualized system.

Any ideas on what access 2002 would be doing during a query function (guess here) that would not work on a virtual machine?

Answer 1

Ok, so when you say the application does not work, do you mean it launches, runs, and runs for some time, or runs until some particular part of the application is used?

Also, what version of the Access runtime are you installing here? Critical to this, would be say to install the a2002 runtime, and ALSO very important to install the office 2002 runtime SP updates.

Note how I stated SP updates for the runtime and NOT the SP updates for office 2002.

Since you NOT re-compiling from source code, then of course matching up the correct runtime AND ALSO the matching up the SAME SP updates to the 2002 Access runtime becomes far more critical.

And going from memory? In that time frame, if I recall correctly, installing office SP updates does NOT update the Access runtime. You thus MUST install the runtime SP updates, and the office SP updates will not work nor help.

So, it not clear what/which runtime you installed into that VM, and it not clear if you ALSO installed the Access 2002 runtime SP updates - which I do recommend.

And, if you have the 2003 runtimes? Tjhat would actually in this case be a reasonable choice, since VERY few feature updates from 2002 to 2003 occured. This resulted in 2003 being very stable, and quite much amounted to a "really" good version of 2002 Access. (but one with all of the SP updates and bug fixes installed).

So, it not clear if you are installing the SP updates for the 2002 runtimes (or perhaps you are using a supplied installer for that application that installs the Access runtime for you?).