Win 7 Virtualization before Win 10 upgrade

I have a weird situation. We are accountants whose database is MS Access 2003 that runs under Win 7. To secure my clients' data we are upgrading to Win 10 for security's sake. There is a possibility that Access 2003 won't work in Win 10 even in compatibility mode (if that's what it is called). I've also read that MS may update Win 10 one day and Access will not work. We can't compile the 2003 version to a higher level so we are stuck with 2003.

Is there a way to virtualize a Win 7 machine with Access 2003 before we upgrade to 10 and then put that VM on our network server and get access to it from our Win 10 workstations? The Server is Server 2012 which we will probably upgrade next year. If this plan works, would RDP to the Win 7 VM allow multiple users to access the db at the same time? This database is our backbone - can't survive without it. Thanks for any ideas...

Ztruker said:

2002 works under Win 10 last time I tried it, which was about 2 years ago, so 2003 should be okay.

Try it. Will only take a few minutes to install Office 2003 to test.

Thank you. I am upgrading 6 win 7 pro machines to win 10 pro and will find out on the first machine I upgrade. I will report back.

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Bree said:

I suspect Ztrucker is correct that Access 2003 should run under Windows 10. As it happens, I've just installed Office 2000 on a W10 VM to investigate another question. So I ran up Access 2000 to see if it works. Apparently so.....



But you are correct in thinking you could run a Virtual Machine, if needed. A W7 machine could be imaged with something like Macrium Reflect and restored to a Hyper-V VM on your server.


https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/hh846766(v%3Dws.11)


Unfortunately, by default W7 only allows one RDP connection, so it may no be much help There are other ways though...

[SOLVED] Windows 7 virtual machine for multiple users at the same time? - Spiceworks

Thanks Bree. This is good. I want to create a win 7 VM before the upgrade to win 10. We run server 2012 in a VM with vmware vsphere. Do you know if it is possible to clone the machine using vspere (a network machine)? If possible I could simply keep the VM on my server and only use it if sometime in the future Win 10 breaks the already installed Access 2003.

Sorry @gusser, I'm retired now and my experience in corporate networks pre-dates vmware vsphere. Windows Server 2000 was current at the time I retired.

Bree said:

Sorry @gusser, I'm retired now and my experience in corporate networks pre-dates vmware vsphere. Windows Server 2000 was current at the time I retired.

Funny. We just upgraded from 2000 server 4 years ago! Thanks anyway.