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Thursday, November 23, 2017

For a 64Bit installation of Windows using a 32-Bit installation of Microsoft Office, which ODBC setup would you use to connect to data sources

For a 64Bit installation of Windows using a 32-Bit installation of Microsoft Office, which ODBC setup would you use to connect to data sources?

  • C:\\Windows\Sys\odbcad32.exe
  • C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe
  • Data source (ODBC)
  • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe 
 
For a 64Bit installation of Windows using a 32-Bit installation of Microsoft Office, which ODBC setup would you use to connect to data sources

EXPLANATION

The default data source (ODBC) uses the 64Bit instance of Microsoft's 32Bit ODBC connector running in the 64Bit memory space.  Microsoft's default Office installation includes the 32Bit version by default for the highest compatibility with other applications.  So, to use ODBC connections with a default installation of Microsoft's Office products, you must use the instance of the ODBCAD32 application that runs in the 32Bit address space that resides in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 directory.
This is counter intuitive when you look at the directory, one would logically assume that the SysWOW64 directory would be for 64Bit applications but, this is not the case:  "In computing on Microsoft platforms, WoW64 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit) is a subsystem of the Windows operating system capable of running 32-bit applications that is included on all 64-bit versions of Windows—including Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, IA-64 and x64 versions of Windows Server 2003, as well as 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. In Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Core, it is an optional component. WoW64 aims to take care of many of the differences between 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows, particularly involving structural changes to Windows itself." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2721825/unable-to-create-dsn-for-microsoft-office-system-dr...
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