Recovering Access 2000 Program

A good friend of mine passed away and he left an old computer running Windows 98.  He was an expert VB programmer and left several programs on this machine. His wife would like to move these programs to a newer computer.  The programs run on the old machine and appear to be written in Access 2000/Developer.  I can see the VB code on one of the programs but can't make any changes.  I have copied these programs from the Windows 98 computer and have tried to run on newer operating system and newer Access versions.  Theses attempts say I don't have necessary access to copy or convert these programs or don't have proper library.  I have original Office 2000 Premium disks (1-4) and Office Developer (1), including security keys.  Can I install these on a newer operating system without distroying anything on those systems. I have available XP, Vista, and Windows 7 systems.  XP are running Office 2003, Vista Office 2007, and WIndows 7 Office 2010.  What would be the best approach/path to try and recover/convert these programs and run on a newer operating and Office systems?  Since the wife is actually using the programs on a continuous basis, I am very reluctant to attempt any changes on the original computer and making them unusable.

I purchased a 3rd party program for determining passwords and group permission settings.  On one program I tried it said there were no passwords and it provided user and group permissions.  I am reluctant to proceed further without consultation as I don't want to destroy of my current running systems.  These programs are sufficiently important that I would consider purchasing a dedicated system for the recovery attempt. I am in the process of purchasing a new all-in-one Windows 7 home premium that I could initially dedicate to this task.