Question

Immediately after installing Office 97, I am no longer able to change the UAC level setting in the "User account control settings" dialog.

I can move the slider bar to a different level up or down but there is no response whatsoever when the ok button is clicked. After un-installing Office 97 completely (I also used eraser97.exe after the normal uninstall process to ensure that it was competely removed), the "User account control settings" dialog no longer even appears when clicking on the "Change user account control settings" link from the Action center.

From the research that I have done so far it seems that this is a common issue with people needing to use Office 97 and it may have something to do with a conflict between the macro protection system in Office 97 and the UAC implementation within Windows 7.

It is still possible to change the UAC settings by making changes directly within the registry but this is less than ideal and shouldn't have to be necessary. I am always logged on as an Administrator and have tried this on 4 seperate computers with exactly the same result. Please note that I am not able in this case to upgrade to a later version of office. I am using only Access from Office 97 and this contains a particular feature that is absolutely necessary for me, that later versions of Access don't have.

I fully understand that Office 97 is no longer supported by Microsoft, but I think that this is irrelevant in this case, as this is a Windows 7 bug when installing software that works correctly on Windows XP. Windows 7 should continue to work satisfactorily whether Office 97 is installed or not, just like any other legacy application. This is particulary true of core aspects such as the UAC.

We have already considered using the Windows 7 XP mode, but due to it's many limitations, this is not a suitable solution for most of the systems we need to install onto.

Note: Other than this issue Access 97 seems to work without problems on Windows 7.

I would be grateful for some assistance with this issue.

Answer 1

Hi All,

We have now worked out what the specific cause of this problem is.

Office 97 makes many changes to the Windows registry when it is installed. This is to be expected of course.

Unfortunately it changes some existing values in specific registry keys which are the cause of the issue. The changes were appropriate for older versions of windows but definitely not for Windows 7.

What has worked for us is to back-up specific registry key values, install Office 97 and then restore these values.

In each case it is the default value of the key that needs to be restored.

The keys in question are:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC9-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCC9-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCCA-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCCA-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32

Restoring the original default values of the last 3 keys shown above will in fact by itself restore the normal operation of the UAC settings user interface, but as the other keys are all closely related they should as a matter of course be restored also.

Regards,

John Van De Giessen

Answer 2

I fully understand that Office 97 is no longer supported by Microsoft, but I think that this is irrelevant in this case

It is entirely relevant. Office 97 was officially supported on XP. It was tested, QA'd, etc. If there is a bug caused by an application that has reached end-of-support, you can't blame MS. They never said it worked, you just want it to.

Answer 3

This could possibly be looked at in a couple ways or mind sets. It does seem however that if it is possible to install an application, any application, that purely by its presence breaks a fundamental and important part of the windows operating system, then Microsoft should probably fix this so that the OS is not affected.