In the days of Windows XP (mostly 32-bit), life was simple. You had one ODBC Administrator tool ( odbcad32.exe ), one set of drivers, and one registry hive. If you created a System DSN, every application on the computer could see it.

If you are setting up a workstation that might run a mix of old and new software, install the 32-bit and 64-bit drivers for your database source. This allows you to create DSNs in both environments simultaneously.

: Manages drivers used by 64-bit applications (e.g., 64-bit Excel or custom x64 software). Location : C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe .

In this deep dive, we are going to dismantle the confusion, fix the "Invisible DSN" syndrome, and show you how to master ODBC on the Windows 7 x64 architecture.