On Windows 7, my VB6 application cannot see the “System” DSN, but it doesn’t have a problem finding the “User” DSN

Question

For a while I was stuck trying to get a visual base 6 application running on Windows 7. The last remaining problem was that it simply could not find the DSN at startup. On suspicion, I deleted the system DSN and created it in the same way, but in Users. Suddenly, everything worked great. I could not do this, so I tried to move it back to the system, thinking that maybe something was wrong, but, of course, it was broken again.

I don’t think anyone else comes across this on my Google search engines, but does anyone have any ideas as to why this might happen?

I really like to return to using a DSN system, which simplifies management.

Thank!

Answer 1

What happens if you launch the VB6 application by right-clicking the icon and selecting "Run as administrator"? I suspect that then you will see system DSNs (which are supposedly visible only for accounts at the administrator level).

Update: I think this will work - configure your system DSN by doing this:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

I think the problem is that the default Win7 interface for configuring DSNs makes them 64-bit, but you need a 32-bit DSN to work with VB6. </PUREGUESSWORK>