Installing 2003 on same PC with previous version?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kate G.
  • Start date Start date
K

Kate G.

I do some training and consulting for Office products... and wonder -- is
there a good way to install multiple versions of the Office aps on the same
machine. (2000 -- XP -- 2003)

Currently -- my classroom runs 2000 so that is what I have kept on my main
machine at home. On my son's machine I installed my Office XP; Now as
many of my clients are beginning to upgrade -- I feel the need to move to
2003 (or at least have it accessible. (learned this helping somebody with
Mail Merge right before the holidays --- 2000 and 2003 mail merge process...
big changes!).

What would you recommend? Partitioning the hard drive? Just separate
installation folders? Or don't even try -- not worth the headaches?

Thanks!

Kate in MN

PS -- Windows XP
 
Hi, Kate,

Because all three of those versions share some of the same registry
entries, common files, and even (by mistake) some help file names,
simultaneous installations are possible but painful. For example,
whichever version was last used is the one that grabs the file
association in Explorer. Office XP and 2003 want to run the Setup if
the other was the last one run, and they rewrite the registry to suit
themselves. Add-Ins like Charting are never downgraded to match the
"current" Office version.

This is true whether you install into different partitions or simply
different folders.

One way that does work is to install multiple copies of Windows as a
multiple-boot setup. Each version of Office thinks it's the only one
on the machine. The drawback is having to reboot to get from one
version to another.

The best of all options is virtual machine software such as Virtual PC
or VMWare. I've been running Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004 for the last
month, and it's perfect -- I can switch from one version to another
with no fuss, and even have them all running simultaneously. See
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/ for details.

I'm not sure whether there are any issues with activating more than
one copy of Windows XP in multiple virtual machines. I have Windows
2000 in each VM, with the whole thing hosted on XP.
 
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