Overview

Today I ran into an issue at a client where new System DSNs were failing to display in the ODBC Data Source Administrator on a Windows Server 2003 server.

Issue

After creating a new System DSN, the DSN would display in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI however would not be visible in the ODBC Data Source Administrator or available to use by any other ODBC aware application.

Solution

The fix was to delete the default Registry key at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI\ODBC Data Sources

1. Right-click the key called ‘ (Default) ‘ and select Delete.
2. If unable to delete the key, double-click the key and erase the Data value entered. Once done, the value should read ‘ (value not set) ‘.

MSKB available here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2000277