Monday, September 12, 2011

32-Bit ODBC Drivers in Windows Server 2008 R2



Being a database guy, one of the issues I noticed right away was that the ODBC Data Source Administrator accessible via Control Panel / Administrative Tools is the 64-bit version and can only be used to setup connections for 64-bit ODBC drivers. Not only was the 64-bit version missing the Postgres driver I had just installed, there were no drivers at all other than SQL Server…

It turns out that there are are two, entirely identical ODBC tools and the one that most of us will end up using initially (unless we're lucky enough to have an all 64-bit architecture) is kept in the basement that is the c:\Windows folder. The 32-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator can be found by going to the Start Menu, selecting Run and executing c:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe as follows…

Once launched, you'll see a tool that appears to be identical in every way, except that the 'missing' ODBC drivers are now available…

Please note that you can't run both 32-bit and 64-bit tools at the same time so please make sure you close the 64-bit one first, it's also worth bearing in mind that if you're running 32-bit applications they will probably be looking for 32-bit DSNs so even if you can get a 64-bit driver for your data source it doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do.



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