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 Dual booting OS's and SQL calls..plz help!

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puppychow
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2010-02-04 : 21:03:26
Greetings,

I have a cad program for work that will only function with MDAC 2.8, and therefore XP. Forget about trying to run it on a different OS than XP, if won't even let you install. I quite like windows 7 and don't want to be resricted to XP simply because of this program. I use it everyday however, so I need to find a solution.

It should be noted I'm no developer and just have a tinkering mind. I assume somewhere out there is a solution to mount an earlier version of MDAC/SQL/Jet - whatever, on Windows 7 through a virtual drive or something else creative. I started looking for a solution but wasn't finding anything that seemed obvious.

Out of frustration I just wiped my computer and installed windows 7 and XP in a dual boot configuration. Not ideal at all but it's a start.

I was tinkering the other day and wondered, from windows 7, if there was a possibility that I could call upon the program.

From W7, I explored to my other drive that has XP and my program on it, created a short cut, and put it on the dektop of w7.

I wasn't expecting anything to happen but when I double clicked on it, I got a pop up asking saying "no hardware key found" (the program has a security measure requring you to insert a usb key before it will launch).

I was really surprised that the program actually tried to initalize. I put my key card in, praying it would work, but I got a no data sources or engine found - I forget the exact message, but it's clear that SQL and the other necessary database components are"sleeping" in XP when I am logged into W7.

At this point my curiosity is really going. In my situation, while I'm in W7, is it possible call, "wake up" and run SQL or whatever else that is seemingly dormant that I need to run my program? I tried to explore through my XP drive while in W7 and double click on important looking SQL icons (told you I'm no DBA) but always got errors or nothing happened.

There must be a way..any ideas? Have I overlooked any other solutions all together that may even be easier.

Thank you for the time.

RickD
Slow But Sure Yak Herding Master

3608 Posts

Posted - 2010-02-05 : 07:06:29
You could have a Virtual desktop running and have a link between them, but you would need VM Ware or similar to get that going.
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Transact Charlie
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

3451 Posts

Posted - 2010-02-05 : 07:39:49
Windows 7 has an XP mode now. I've never used it but it's had a lot of coverage in the press and forums / journals It actually is XP running inside a virtual machine under windows 7.

Start here for an ars article. Go from there:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2010/01/windows-xp-mode.ars


Charlie
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Msg 3903, Level 16, State 1, Line 1736
The ROLLBACK TRANSACTION request has no corresponding BEGIN TRANSACTION
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