Question

I am running 64 bit windows 7.

I am 100% positive I am calling bcp from the command line correctly: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\bcp.exe

However, I consistently get an error stating: “The program or feature “\??\C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\bcp.exe” cannot start or run due to incompatibity (sic) with 64-bit versions of Windows. Please contact the software vendor to ask if a 64-bit Windows compatible version is available”

I re-installed and repaired the command line utilities. I am totally stuck. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Sounds to me like BCP from 2005 is running when what you really want is the 2008 64 bit to run.

You’ll need to update the PATH variable in your system to use the right version of BCP. See first paragraph in the REMARKS section in BCP MSDN Article for further explanation.

Setting Path on Windows

Windows 7

1.Select Computer from the Start menu

2.Choose System Properties from the context menu

3.Click Advanced system settings > Advanced tab

4.Click on Environment Variables, under System Variables, find PATH, and click on it.

5.In the Edit windows, modify PATH by adding the location of the BCP utility to the value for PATH. If you do not have the item PATH, you may select to add a new variable and add PATH as the name and the location of the class as the value.

Windows XP

1.Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced

2.Click on Environment Variables, under System Variables, find PATH, and click on it.

3.In the Edit windows, modify PATH by adding the location of the BCP utility to the value for PATH. If you do not have the item PATH, you may select to add a new variable and add PATH as the name and the location of the class as the value.

4.Close the window.