From Microsoft Knowledge Base:
«When you try to install Access 97, you have to avoid the "Microsoft Access can't start because there is no license for it on this machine" error message caused by the presence of the Hatten font, which is installed by Access 2000 and Office 2000.»
Careful! Those fonts are tricky.
I ran into that one several years ago, in my harried days as a system administrator. That was when I decided that forced upgrades were harmful.