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I have a friend who has managed to go for many years running their company on an old piece of software that is no longer supported. The original software vendor is no longer in business and the one who bought them out went to cloud hosting only.

The last time they had a problem was 3 or 4 years ago I was able to find a tech who knew enough to get them running on Windows 7 using SQL Express 2005 (or 2008 not sure now)

Due to a recent virus problem, they lost their access to this database. I kept the OS on Windows 7 but cannot get the database reconnected because they no longer have the install CD for the software Does anyone have a suggestion as to how best to re-enable/reconnect a database manually?

I got as far as being told that I had to use regsvr32 to activate several dll's (OCX etc) but still no good.

This is a very small business who cannot afford a new multi-thousand dollar application when they may not be here many more years. If not for the virus, what they had worked fine. All of their backups are still here but in ".bak" format, not the mdf / ldf files. Without the installer I am not sure how to reregister the required dll's. They have long since disposed of all cd's and the last few updates done 3 years ago were downloads which are (of course) also gone.

Best I can tell it was using SQL Express 2005 on Windows 7 x64. MS advises only using SQL Express 2012 now but I am not sure the commands even work the same and now there at least 3 versions of SQL Express 2012 (Advanced, etc.). Is there an easy import to 2012 for the data files or should I put SQL 2005 or 2008 onto Win7 x64? Or worst case, what program would be best to do a raw data import since these files contain all their accounts receivables and without them they don’t know who owes what.

Any help appreciated.

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  • and clearly they don't have a backup of the entire system from before the virus infection? Mar 28, 2013 at 15:33
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    the .BAK files are SQL Server backups... you need to use SQL Server to RESTORE DATABASE on those files to restore the original .mdf and .ldf (if that is necessary) Mar 28, 2013 at 15:34
  • You can restore SQL 2005 on a SQL 2012 server, no problem. The software shouldn't be a problem either: it's highly unlikely you'll get any issue.
    – Stephane
    Mar 28, 2013 at 15:53
  • So both the application and data sat on the same win7 device, correct? I don't think your problem will be with getting a functional sql solution I just don't think you'll get the app to install correctly... thus you'll need to reverse engineer the sql DB to get useable data. You speak of a cloud solution I'd go that way to recover this mess.
    – tony roth
    Mar 28, 2013 at 16:59

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