1

Hello SpiceWorks,

Not sure what happened, but we have some ODBC connections on our shipping computer and they suddenly stopped working. When I went into the ODBC manager to check them out, and double-click on a connection, it tells me there’s a problem with the ODBC driver for Excel (or Access on another connection), and to reinstall the ODBC driver.

So, to Google I went. First I found a reference to the MDAC installer, which I installed. No luck. Next I found several posts that mentioned that ODBC drivers for Excel and Access are installed along with Office. So I tried repairing Office. No luck. Tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling Office. No luck.

Can’t figure out what the heck’s going on. Any suggestions?

6 Spice ups
2

Can you get a more detailed error from the event viewer?

Are they coded with a password that might have changed or got locked?

Do you have the ability to go back to a last known good restore point?

3

Delete the old connections. they can persist through an install/uninstall. then try to do the repair again. don’t forget to check all the tabs under the ODBC panel.

4

Odd-i-T: Haven’t checked Event Viewer yet. Tried a system restore to a week ago when things were working, and the drivers are still missing.

MBrownPeg: Sounds promising, except the network admin who was here before me built the connections, and as far as I can tell there’s no backup of them anywhere. So I’m afraid if I delete them they’ll be gone forever. And since I can’t get into the connection because of the error message, I can’t see how it was set up so I can rebuild it. Is there a registry key or something I can back up before I try deleting them so I can rebuild them?

Sorry, this isn’t my strong suit.

5

ODBC settings can be found in the registry under HKLM\Software\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI or on x64 HKLM\Software\wow6432node\ODBCODBCINST.INI

I would backup the key then wipe out the settings and rebuild.

Sorry I edited this like 4 times.

6

You could also check a different machine. also those are static connections usually created by installing office. dbase, excel files, and ms access database are all pre-config connections. unless the previous net admin went in and removed them to add custom connections???