How do I use a 32-bit ODBC driver on 64-bit Server 2008 when the installer doesn't create a standard DSN?

Question

I ran into an issue with some third party software that we use to track software license usage in our computer labs. We recently migrated the app to 64-bit Server 2008 after re

Answer 1

It turns out that you can create 32-bit ODBC connections using C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe. My solution was to create the 32-bit ODBC connection as a System DSN. This still didn't allow me to connect to it since .NET couldn't look it up. After significant and fruitless searching to find how to get the OdbcConnection class to look for the DSN in the right place, I stumbled upon a web site that suggested modifying the registry to solve a different problem.

I ended up creating the ODBC connection directly under HKLM\Software\ODBC. I looked in the SysWOW6432 key to find the parameters that were set up using the 32-bit version of the ODBC administration tool and recreated this in the standard location. I didn't add an entry for the driver, however, as that was not installed by the standard installer for the app either.

After creating the entry (by hand), I fired up my windows service and everything was happy.