ODBC - System DSN window is blank

We've run into a few XP machines in our organization that have some interesting quirk going on. We have several ODBC connections configured on the machines. However, when you go to ODBC connections, then click on the System DSN tab, it's empty. If we try to manually create a "missing" odbc, it says it already exists, do you want to overwrite, etc. We say yes, but it still doesn't appear. The main program being used has a dropdown box at the login screen that shows the various ODBC names to choose from. The ones from the System DSN tab (which is blank anyway) are not listed. However, if you manually type in the name of the ODBC that is supposedly configured but doesn't show up, it works. So, it sees the ODBC, but it won't display it to the human eye in the settings or drop down lists. What's up with that? We've tried reinstalling MDAC, java, windows updates, etc, etc. Only some machines are affected. I am unable to tell you what's been done to all these machines. The users are all set as admins on their machines. They all run similar software, etc. The only thing that happened around the time we started noticing this is that we added a couple new ODBCs and changed the settings in an existing one. We sent an exe to all users in the organization that auto configures these ODBC's so we don't have to do it manually. It works awesome, but I don't see how that exe could have caused this problem especially when the problem seems to have only shown up on about 1% of the PCs it was applied to.Found this at: http://www.dbforums.com/t1055278.html

01-01-05, 01:37
wconner50
Registered User

Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2
System DSN not in ODBC Manager
You should export the registry entries for the ODBC.INI Data source and DataSet Names. Then edit the .reg exported file and see if there are any odd lines of text. I found a corrupt entry in the ODBC Data Source registry entry, all the missing system DSN's were right after the corrupt line. Delete corrupt line and deleted ODBC Data Source registry entry, then imported .reg file.

Problem was resolved.