[DaveKi]

1) Is anyone doing this &/or know if it will work ok (as in not cause Win7 to crash or otherwise cause a problem)? Since I already have XP Pro and am perfectly happy with not having some of the extra gadgets that come with the newer Office (along with the newer price ) I'd like to just use what I have.

2) I've been told (by one person) that it will be fine and to just make sure to "uninstall" any Office programs on my Win7 computer before installing. However, I've also been told (by someone else..a computer store employee) that it won't work.

Thanks for the help!
Dave

[techie4fun]

I've run Office XP on XP, but never on anything higher. You never know until you try. I would try this before trying my last suggestion>>>> Your other option is to load a virtual machine running Windows XP inside Windows 7 and run Office from there.

[DaveKi]

Loading a virtual machine "sounds" tricky. Also, does that cause the computer to run slower due to running a Windows7 AND Virtual XP at the same time? Thanks.

This post has been edited by DaveKi: 10 April 2012 - 12:59 PM

[techie4fun]

DaveKi, on 10 April 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

Also, does that cause the computer to run slower due to running a Windows7 AND Virtual XP at the same time? Thanks.

That would all depend on your system specifications: memory, cpu speed, etc. I would try getting Office to run. if it doesn't, then we'll talk about virtual machines.

[DaveKi]

techie4fun, on 10 April 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

DaveKi, on 10 April 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

Also, does that cause the computer to run slower due to running a Windows7 AND Virtual XP at the same time? Thanks.

That would all depend on your system specifications: memory, cpu speed, etc. I would try getting Office to run. if it doesn't, then we'll talk about virtual machines.

Alright, just to double check:
1) Am I correct in assuming I MUST uninstall all Microsoft Office software (via programs and features/uninstall) prior to installing?

2) I think that would be:

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 --> Pretty Sure this would be one to delete.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (English) --> Pretty Sure this would be one to delete.
Microsoft Office Suite Activation Assistant --> Not sure if this is one that would be uninstalled?

Sound Right?
Thanks

FYI:
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit
Processor: AMD Athlon™ II Dual-Core M320, AMD64 Family 16 Model 6 Stepping 2
Processor Count: 2
RAM: 2812 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200, 256 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 291830 MB, Free - 238385 MB;
Motherboard: Gateway, NV73

[LiveBrianD]

DaveKi, on 10 April 2012 - 09:59 AM, said:

1) Is anyone doing this &/or know if it will work ok (as in not cause Win7 to crash or otherwise cause a problem)? Since I already have XP Pro and am perfectly happy with not having some of the extra gadgets that come with the newer Office (along with the newer price ) I'd like to just use what I have.

2) I've been told (by one person) that it will be fine and to just make sure to "uninstall" any Office programs on my Win7 computer before installing. However, I've also been told (by someone else..a computer store employee) that it won't work.

Thanks for the help!
Dave

I'm almost certain that it will work just fine. I haven't tested office XP on win7 myself, but I have used 2003 (and 2007 and 2010) and know a guy with office 2000 on a win7 machine. Note: you don't want multiple copies of outlook on the same machine. Also, for instance, I have an older win xp machine with office 2007 home and student (word, excel, powerpoint installed) and office 2003 pro (for publisher), and it works just fine. Actually, now that I think about it, I also know a guy with office XP on win7.

Since I'm assuming you don't need that copy of office 2007 (perhaps it was preinstalled and now the trial expired?), nuke it (including the activation thing).

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 10 April 2012 - 04:37 PM

[DaveKi]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

I'm almost certain that it will work just fine. I haven't tested office XP on win7 myself, but I have used 2003 (and 2007 and 2010) and know a guy with office 2000 on a win7 machine. Note: you don't want multiple copies of outlook on the same machine. Also, for instance, I have an older win xp machine with office 2007 home and student (word, excel, powerpoint installed) and office 2003 pro (for publisher), and it works just fine. Actually, now that I think about it, I also know a guy with office XP on win7.

Since I'm assuming you don't need that copy of office 2007 (perhaps it was preinstalled and now the trial expired?), nuke it (including the activation thing).

Thanks Brian. Yes, trial expired. Sounds like it should work ok and I don't use outlook mail so I'm in the clear irt the bug that apparently exists with that. Just because I want a clean install (heard horror stories) I'd like to verify the following irt preparing to install Office XP Pro:

Quote

This is what's in control panel/programs and features:
1. Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
2. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (English)
3. Microsoft Office Suite Activation Assistant
--> If I use this method, I'm pretty Sure I should right click/uninstall 1&2 but not 100% sure about 3?

--OR---

is it better to go into Start/All Programs/Microsoft Office and right click/Delete on the Microsoft Office Folder "itself" (or select individual items from the Start list (A-F Below). where I see the following:
A- Microsoft 60day trial - online
B- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
C- Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
D- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
E- Microsoft Office Word 2007
F- Folder--> (Microsoft Office Tools)

a- Digital Certificate for VBA Projects

B- Microsoft Clip Organizer

c- Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings

d- Microsoft Office Diagnostics

e- Microsoft Office Picture Manager

I hope that's all not TOO crazy and that it makes sense. Basically I'm trying to figure out if you think I should use the control Panel -OR- go straight to the Start Menu. Once that's known, how many of the listed items need to be removed? Maybe you could color the ones RED that I should remove (on the list that's applicable to how I should go about it)?

Thanks so much Brian!

[LiveBrianD]

Nuke all the office things in control panel. Deleting programs from the start menu does nothing but remove the shortcut - the program is still on your hard drive. (for instance, type C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe into the start menu and hit enter and you'll still be able to launch word) Don't bother doing that.



1. Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
2. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (English)
3. Microsoft Office Suite Activation Assistant

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 10 April 2012 - 06:25 PM

[techie4fun]

Yeah definitely remove the programs using add-remove programs from Control Panel. You'll also have to uninstall previous versions installed to install Office XP (if it was newer than what you currently had installed it wouldn't matter new versions generally overwrite old versions).

[DaveKi]

LiveBrianD, on 10 April 2012 - 06:24 PM, said:

Nuke all the office things in control panel. Deleting programs from the start menu does nothing but remove the shortcut - the program is still on your hard drive. (for instance, type C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe into the start menu and hit enter and you'll still be able to launch word) Don't bother doing that. <---LOL, Ok, I didn't but it IS interesting.


1. Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
2. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (English)
3. Microsoft Office Suite Activation Assistant

Thanks Brian & techie4fun that's what I'll do. I don't have any XP software on the computer right now so I don't "think" that last comment applies. One last thing (because I don't want to screw anything up). Do I have to close my browser windows and everything else when doing the uninstall and install or can I stay online and have a program or 2 running? When I'm online I have a program called People PC running (my internet connection software) because I'm in the country (with a bug hill immediately behind the house) and stuck on dial up till DSL gets here. About 2 more yrs Ugg...

[LiveBrianD]

Nahh, go ahead and leave other stuff open, it won't make a difference.

Come to think of it, I think coastie65 went straight from dial-up to FIOS (fiber-optics). lol I went from dial-up (a long time ago) to DSL, and more recently cable. FIOS isn't available here though (Verizon is the only company I know of offering fiber-optics internet to the home, and they only have cell phone service here, not land-lines).

[DaveKi]

I had cable from 2000-2005 than I moved and now I'm in the slow lane. LOL But I cope by having multiple tabs open so I can work on one while another is loading something.

- Ok, I uninstalled, rebooted, and started the install. My Q is: It's asking me where I want to install it and is defaulting to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\ but I was wondering if there would be any benefit to installing it in:
C:\Program Files\ because my understanding was that the 2 are set up differently? Something about 32bit vs. 64bit or 86x...? Am I way off here?

[LiveBrianD]

Install it to the default folder (x86). Most programs nowadays are 32-bit, so they install in the (x86) program files folder if you have a 64-bit machine. This is VERY common nowadays, and you won't have issues. If you have a 64-bit program on a 64-bit machine or a 32-bit program on a 32-bit machine, it installs to plain old Program Files.

[DaveKi]

Thanks for that insight Brian. Hey, it seems to be working! I didn't install outlook (due to the reported bugs ("where there's a few bugs, there may be more"...) so hopefully it ends up fine. The "expert" at the store did seem to know a bit about computers (build his) but I really didn't see why the newer OS's wouldn't be backwards compatible (aside from trying to force you to buy more product of course ).

Even if they released a new OS that I couldn't install Office XP on directly (like we did here), do you think it will always be possible to run a virtual machine running XP "inside" any new OS that comes out?

Thanks again for the help.
Dave

This post has been edited by DaveKi: 13 April 2012 - 12:08 PM

[LiveBrianD]

The only reason I can think of for that to not work is if systems start becoming 128-bit and they can no longer run 32-bit programs. (That's probably a long way off though, with 64-bit providing support for more than enough ram.) Even if that happened, yes, you could use a virtual machine to run it. I've run Word 6.0 under DOS in a virtual machine (16-bit!) on my Win7 64-bit computer.

[oral2012]

thanks for sharing

[DaveKi]

LiveBrianD, on 13 April 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

The only reason I can think of for that to not work is if systems start becoming 128-bit and they can no longer run 32-bit programs. (That's probably a long way off though, with 64-bit providing support for more than enough ram.) Even if that happened, yes, you could use a virtual machine to run it. I've run Word 6.0 under DOS in a virtual machine (16-bit!) on my Win7 64-bit computer.

1) Wow, now I don't feel so bad to be clinging on to OfficeXP as long as possible lol!

2) Hey, I did get a message after running Word. After closing a Word doc I received a message about "Microsoft Agent". It asked if I wanted it to go online to search for a solution and I said yes. Then, it basically says my version of Agent isn't compatible with this OS (Windows7). Do you know what that means? Will I notice any substantially adverse effects that you can think of?

3) On the virtual machine topic: It sound like something that would be useful to be able to do in the future. What sort of info can you give me about doing it (like system load and memory req's to run 2 OS's at the same time. Here's my laptop Sys Info (don't laugh):

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit
Processor: AMD Athlon™ II Dual-Core M320, AMD64 Family 16 Model 6 Stepping 2
Processor Count: 2
RAM: 2812 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200, 256 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 291830 MB, Free - 238385 MB;
Motherboard: Gateway, NV73

I said DON'T laugh...

I'm guessing I need more RAM because I already notice a slowing down effect when I've got a bunch of Chrome (or Explorer) windows/Tabs open. I usually end up with 2-3 main windows open with 5-8 tabs open in each one. I use "task manager" to track memory usage (performance tab) and it usually doesn't take long for the "Physical Memory (MB)" section to say there's only 20-100MB available which seems crazy because I "thought" 3GB RAM would be more than enough to simply run an OS and some internet pages...

BTW, memory usage seems to go up ON IT'S OWN just by leaving internet windows open (I look in the Memory (Private Working Set) column of the "Processes" tab in Task Manager). For Ex: I open 1 Chrome window (with a few internet tabs as well), then note what the numbers are in Memory (Private Working Set). Then I just leave it alone for a few hrs and look again. The numbers will have gone a lot after just sitting there doing nothing... Eventually, Physical Memory (MB) (in the "Performance" tab) goes to single digits and everything's really slow (I get pop up windows about things "not responding" but I click "wait" to give them time to rest and "catch up".

I understand this can happen but I DID think 3GB of RAM was enough. Apparently not? ... I'm thinking about going to 6GB so hopefully that would be enough to run a virtual XP OS.

This post has been edited by DaveKi: 15 April 2012 - 10:44 AM

[LiveBrianD]

1. Hey, I just upgraded my grandmother's PC to Office 2003 yesterday! (it was infected, and I was reinstalling the OS on it) Nice and up to date, right? (it was running office 2000, but I had a spare copy of 2003 lying around)
2. You can ignore that message.3. ha ha ha ha ha ha... oh wait...
You have 3GB RAM (with some taken by the integrated graphics), right? Keep in mind that you actually should have two modules of the same size (ex. 2x2GB), and right now you probably have a 2GB and a 1GB module. If you don't do that, you'll loose a little performance (just on benchmarks though - in reality, it isn't noticeable).

As for the amount free, well, you're probably misunderstanding this a bit. Take a look at a screenshot of resource monitor on my PC:


Hardware reserved - if you have integrated graphics, this will be a few hundred MB. I have dedicated graphics in this PC, which is why I barely have any hardware reserved.
In use - what's actually being used for what you're doing
Modified - stuff that needs to be written to disc before that ram can be used for something else I think.
Standby - this is used for cached stuff. If you launch a bunch of programs, this will be freed up. It is simply a way to use your extra ram more efficiently, and that's why on a Vista or 7 machine you'll probably have next to nothing completely free.
Free - if you have a ton of extra ram and Windows doesn't have stuff to cache in it. If you have 4GB or less, you won't have much of that, which is perfectly normal. The only reason why I have a ton there is because I have 8GB RAM in here, which is overkill for most people.

If you wanted to run an older program on your machine, I suggest using XP (for the virtual OS) and giving it 1GB RAM (leaving around 2GB for the host).

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 15 April 2012 - 12:51 PM

[DaveKi]

LiveBrianD, on 15 April 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

1) Hey, I just upgraded my grandmother's PC to Office 2003 yesterday! (it was infected, and I was reinstalling the OS on it) Nice and up to date, right? (it was running office 2000, but I had a spare copy of 2003 lying around). LOL. I've actually got you beat (if that's the way to put it) because I have a desktop running Windows98 that I haven't upgraded because it has a lifetime corporate antivirus on it that I think I'd lose if I upgraded it.
--Irt your 13Apr post: What does Word 6.0
2) You can ignore that message. Great.
3) ha ha ha ha ha ha... oh wait... <<<<
Keep in mind that you actually should have two modules of the same size (ex. 2x2GB), and right now you probably have a 2GB and a 1GB module. That's the way it came. I guess I could replace the 1 with a 2 iot gain 1GB and have the same size.

As for the amount free, here's a comparison of yours to mine:

YOURS---MINE(2 diff times)

Hardware reserved---->9________260----260
In use---------------->2191_______1857--1936
Modified---------------->77_________56-----51
Standby------------->1296________850---821
Free----------------->4619_________49------4 If I don't have much running this goes up to around 400-500 but still not close to you (unless you dropped to 4 total GB's which "I think" would drop your free to 619 right?)

4) If you wanted to run an older program on your machine, I suggest using XP (for the virtual OS) and giving it 1GB RAM (leaving around 2GB for the host). With how much I'm already using on that resource monitor I'd be a bit nervous taking 1GB away from the host to give to the virtual.

--I wonder if anyone else has run a virtual on a Windows7 machine with less than 4GB of total RAM?... Anyone? Anyone?...

[LiveBrianD]

Fyi:
Office 7 - 95
Office 8 - 97

Office 9 - 2000
Office 10 - 2002/XP
Office 11 - 2003

Office 12 - 2007

Office 14 - 2010
Word 6 was the last DOS version.

I used to have 4GB RAM in this PC, and when I did, I usually didn't have much completely free (it varies - sometimes almost nothing is free, otherwise it can be 500MB or more). My laptop, with 4GB (3.6GB usable thanks to the integrated graphics) is the same way. (Windows 7 64-bit)

I suppose if you needed to you could give an XP VM just 512MB (XP doesn't run super well with that, but it'll work. 1GB is recommended though.). I would probably swap the 1GB ram module in the machine for a 2GB one if running virtual machines, particularly since the graphics are stealing some of it.