Installing Frontpage 2003 Upgrade on WIN 7 Ultimate OS

I know the program is a dinosaur...but at the moment I am locked in to using it.

I have FP up and running on a desktop with a Vista OS and Office 2003 but I want the mobility that my laptop offers.

When I originally tried to install this same software on my WIN 7 Home Premium laptop it was unable to find a qualifying program. It wasn't seeing the Office 2003 - even with the actual install disk in the CD drive.

So, I purchased the upgrade to WIN 7 Ultimate and have installed the Virtual PC with XP Mode thinking I could circumvent the WIN 7 and get FP installed through the virtual OS. I have access to both Office XP for Students and an Enterprise Version of Office Professional 2003. This should be working, but it isn't. Suggestions?

The post title says "...Frontpage 2003 Upgrade..."

...which means to install FP2003 UPGRADE you need to have a previous version of FP either installed or available during the upgrade. Office 2003 is not a qualifying product for FP2003 Upgrade.

Regards,
GEWB

Brian,
Your information is not helpful. She said she upgraded her Windows, not her FrontPage. FrontPage is NOT supported by Windows 7 and is no longer supported by Microsoft at all. It does not work in Win 7, period. If you are able to install it, which most can't, there is a chance it will appear to run if you've just done an upgrad from XP to Win 7 and not a clean install of FrontPage, but if you try to insert graphics, make forms or even save a page it will not work and you will get one of any number of errors. Even if you run it in XP Compatibility Mode. Microsoft says flat out that some programs, even theirs, designed for XP will not work in Windows 7 although they do not "name names." (That I'm aware.)

MS does also say that if one has Win 7 Pro or Ultimate once can download and install their free XP Mode pprogram which supposedly runs an XP window withing Win 7, but from those I've read about that have tried it, and also Virtual Machine, it still does not work. Tech-Net is of little help as they no longer discuss FrontPage except in relation to using an outside contractor to help make IIS and FrontPage extensions to work on Win 7 servers. I'm loath to spend another $90 to upgrade to Win 7 Professional just to get this one feature and then still not have it work.

I have Expression Web but hate it and truly miss my FrontPage as Expression Web is about the buggiest program I've ever seen, and it it more designed for large corporate users than for the small design group or individual who cannot afford to attend constant training classes. I'm dismayed that Microsoft will not make the effort to make FrontPage work in Win 7. I'm sure there are still many thousands, if not millions, of users around the world that get a very bad taste in their mouths over this and as I, start looking for alternatives to Microsoft products.

Oh, and I'm not a neophyte as I'm a retired MCSE, A+, Web Developer, and Microsoft Office instuctor who's been working with computers since 1968 and MS since PC DOS 1.0 and even "86-DOS" before that. I've been using FrontPage since before MS owned it when it was still owned by Vermeer designing my first pages for the WWW in 1994.
Sheldon

Biker451,
Please get your story straight on the FP2003. I know for a fact that FP2003 does work in Windows 7, Premium and Professional in both 32bit and 64bit Win7 environments. I legally have Win7 Premium, Professional, FP2003 and have tried all within Win7 32bit and 64bit environments. Unless you know for sure, please keep your advice to yourself and don't mislead others to the wrong answers!

I guess I should have said that FrontPage 2003 will "run" under Win 7, but you may experience the inability to save your work, you will in all probability no longer be able to edit dynamically, or "Live", on the Web, and after several minutes of work your screen may lock. And there is nothing more frustrating than working for an hour and then not being able to save your work, or losing it entirely on a lockup. Microsoft's "solution" to these problems is to upgrade to Expression Web. Just Google "Frontpage windows 7" and you will find many, many pages, sites, threads infinitum dealing with this: Here is just one little snippet. Read between the lines:
_____________
If you have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, you can install FrontPage in
the Windows XP virtual machine and use XPMode.
Ron Symonds
Microsoft MVP (Expression Web)
About Web faqs
_____________________________________
If FrontPage always ran in Windows 7 there would be no need for this advise. And if you research it more you will find many people who do have Professional or Ultimate 7, have installed XPmode, and still have problems. Also, if Microsoft believes there is no problem there would be no reason for all the advice in the Knowledge Base to upgrade to Pro or Ultimate and download and install XPmode. I'm now mostly retired and every dollar is very important to me so do I spend $90 to get the upgrade to Win 7 Professional with maybe a 50/50 chance that it will fix the problem? I do have Expression Web, but do not like it. This isn't the place to discuss the reasons for it. All of my and my customer's sites (I've retired but a few customers just won't let me go.) are hosted on FrontPage servers. I know this is legacy and I know that Microsoft is trying to force everyone to move to their newer products; read "Removing Legacy Components" on the "Understanding Application Compatibility" page here: Understanding Application Compatibility Sure, there are great reasons to make the move to higher level products if you are in a corporate or enterprise environment, but many of us are not and FrontPage met our needs perfectly.

I and many, many others wouldn't be asking the question if it did work for us. I do believe when you say it works for you, but the fact remains that it doesn't work for all of us. I have noticed that a lot of the people having problems with it have installed an upgrade to 2003 from a previous version and not a clean install of a full retail version of FrontPage. That was my case also. When I tried to run my upgraded FP2003 after upgrading to Win 7 from XP Pro it would lock up within a minute of working. Of course once I found it would not work I did set the compatibility to XP, but that made no difference. I then spent several hours reading Q&A sites and finally uninstalled FP altogether and reinstalled if from a full retail version of FP2003. After that it I still had the problems although not as severe. Compatibility was once again set to XP wherein I was able to actually open a page and edit for the first time, but even then, once I tried to save the page I was unsuccessful. Just to confirm I just now fired up FP2003, "open site", went to one of my sites on a FrontPage server opened the index.html file and it popped up on the screen but got the hour glass

I just keep hoping there is a definitive solution for those of us who are having problems rather than just saying that it works under Win 7 and implying that we who are having problems are either lying or maybe just plain idiots.

According to the Windows 7 Compatibility Center, there are no compatibility issues between Windows 7 and Frontpage 2003.

Windows 7 Compatibility for frontpage 2003: Drivers, Updates, Downloads

By definition, this implies that Frontpage 2003 should run under Windows 7.

However, I would assume that we are talking about the full program rather than an upgrade so it's debatable whether the upgrade from an earlier version of Frontpage would run.

You guys - please don't talk too loud ... I have been using FrontPage 2003 with Win7 and SO FAR have had absolutely no problems with it... I am using it on my desktop with Win7 Home Premium, and my laptop with Win7 Professional. I am no web design expert by any stretch of the imagination, but in using the basic tools and feature have had no problems with design or publication (through GoDaddy). I'm just offering my input as part of the mix.

JimmyG1 said:

You guys - please don't talk too loud ... I have been using FrontPage 2003 with Win7 and SO FAR have had absolutely no problems with it...

Welcome!

This thread didn't state that FP doesn't run in Win7; the OP stated he couldn't install the FP UPGRADE. The OP didn't have a qualifying product so of course the upgrade would not install.

Regards,
GEWB

Well, an update... I completely removed all remnants of FP2003 from my system, then re-installed it. Now it seems to almost be working. I say "almost" because I've also discovered something that explains why it will no longer work editing dynamically and saving pages using FrontPage and not FTP. I have done all my hosting at GoDaddy for about 11 years now and they quietly quit supporting FrontPage Extensions. No notice. Not even an e-Mail to their Windows clients. I had over 100 domains hosted there at one time, before I mostly retired, and they were all on IIS/FrontPage servers. That explains why I could not longer get FrontPage created forms to save or work, as well as hit counters and other features that required FrontPage Extensions. The clean install fixed FrontPage not working on my computer, but now that I can't edit dynamically I no longer have a real use for FrontPage. I still have about 20 sites I support and I do have Expression Web, so I guess it is time to bite the bullet and move on. Sometimes it is just time to replace that old, comfortable, well-broken-in pair of shoes with the new, uncomfortable pair. Even they will one day be comfortable and one just has to get past the "Dang do my feet hurt" stage.

I do appreciate all the help and advice. It was my installation and GoDaddy's no longer supporting FP Extensions, but from where I sat it sure looked like FP wasn't working on Win 7 as my troubles started the moment I upgraded to Win 7.

Sheldon

All's well that end's well.

Thanks for the update and if you need any help with Expression Web, you know where to come. :)