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Asked: 2026-06-10T19:28:15+00:00

I’m trying to connect an Access DB (2010 32-bit) to a System ODBC connection

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I’m trying to connect an Access DB (2010 32-bit) to a System ODBC connection on a Windows 7 PC (64-bit)

However, when I try to link to the Machine Data source for it, I can’t find the ODBC data source I created.

I know there’s an issue between 32 bit apps and the 64 driver.
And that there are two version of the ODBC Datasource Administrator

  • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe
  • C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe

I’ve tried both, and neither one seems to be able to create an ODBC source that is visible to me. How can I get this working?

Note: User data sources seem to work fine, but system data sources to not.

Data source I’m working with is a MS SQL Server 2008 DB on a separate machine.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Have you tried making one from Access? When you choose external data sources, odbc, you are given a chance to create the DSN from inside of Access. And you can at that point in time create a system DSN. (Access will launch the correct version of the ODBC manager for you).

    Because Access is a 32 bit, then the location of these system DSN’s are thus here:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ODBC\ODBC.INI\name of SYSTEM DSN

    So you MUST launch the 32 bit version.

    (but, it REALLY it is a lot easier to let Access launch this for you).

    So, if you launch the 32 bit version of the ODBC manager, this one:

    C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

    Then you should be fine (so do NOT use the one from the control panel).

    So, if you create the system DSN using the 32 bit version (the one from sysWOW), then you should see it in Access when you launch the same odbc manager. You see this:

    enter image description here

    In the above, I created two system DSN’s, one from letting Access launch the manager, and the other from laucnhes the syswow version from the cmd prompt – either way, you should see this list.

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