Ah - that would explain things, as Win 7 and Access 97 are not compatible. You should try persuading your office to get into the 21st century!
(You also have another option - upgrade properly to Pro or Ultimate from Home Premium, and then install XPMode, and use Office 97 from within that)
Reinstalling Home Premium over Pro will ALWAYS entail a Clean install with consequent data loss if not backed up, however you do it.
Thank you for the definitive (and depressing) news. I appreciate all your help and will start the process of backup, rebuild asap. Would it make more sense to upgrade to a new copy of windows 7 and pay the $200 to do so, or would I still have to install my original settings anyways to "upgrade" our copy?
Your options are -
1) use a manufacterer's Recovery disk back to Home Premium - either 32-bit or 64-bit, as available - full reinstall required
2) Use a borrowed/downloaded Retail WIn7 HP disk, and clean install.
3) purchase a Retail Upgrade pack (NOT an Anytime Ugrade) for Win7 Pro - change the Key to the one in the pack, and then explain to an operator for activation (this may be problematic depending on the operator involved).
4) Purchase a Full Retail copy of Win7 Pro, and use the Key from that to make the current system genuine - should activate without a problem.
As I said earlier, if you stick with Pro, you can use XPMode to 'talk to' the Access files you need, with Office 97. XP Mode is 32-bit, even if teh host OS is 64-bit.
In either cases 3 or 4, you will end up with the option of 32-bit or 64-bit disks with which you can reinstall the system at need.
Given the amount of reinstall and reconfigure required, I think I will investigate the 3 or 4 option since I know our current situation is working great. We tried running the program in compatibility mode for windows xp sp2 and to no avail. The communication to our server was extremely sluggish (slower than the old computer this one replaced). Again, thank you for all of your help on this. Glad someone out there has it straight.
To confirm purchase of Retail Upgrade pack - Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade Version) would be the desired product correct?
Yep - this one, to be precise....
Microsoft Store Online - Windows 7
or the same product from a retail store (there don't seem to be the same discounts available in the US as there are in the UK, so there's not much point in me gicing you direct links, but here's one anyhow <g> Windows 7 Professional Upgrade - Windows)
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