ODBC Driver Install Problem.

Question

Hi,
I am having a problem installing the Oracle ODBC driver from the Oracle 9i 9.2.0.1.0 client CD onto a Windows 2000 professional SP4 machine.
The Universal installer says everything is installed but the driver does not appear the the Windows ODBC adminstrator. Having a quick look at the registry they seem to be installed but they do not appear in the list when trying to set up a new data source.
The client install works OK as SQLPLUS and the other tools are fine.
Has anybody else had this problem?
Thanks,
Richard

Answer 1

Thought I would post this, as it's taken me a whole morning to get to the bottom of it - but I cannot find it anywhere else on the Web, and it will hopefully save a lot of frustration!
WARNING - ALTERING THE REGISTRY CAN SERIOUSLY AFFECT YOUR MACHINE - DON'T BLAME ME IF THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT WORK, AND DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU ARE IN AANY WAY UNSURE OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!
The 'Drivers' tab in the ODBC Data Source Administrator will only show a maximum number of drivers, as the number shown appears to be limited by the size of the registry key(!!!!!). Whether this is a limit on characters, or size, I do not know, but the ODBC Data Source Administrator 'Drivers' tab will not read past a certain number of characters in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers. Anything beyond around 5830 characters (it seems to vary depending on the key name, and this is according to Word's 'Word Count' functionality - and this includes blank spaces, so it may be size related) is ignored.
To replicate this....
# Export the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers, and take a copy of the file for editing / trashing
# Open the copy in Word, and do a Word count
# Chop it until the last entry takes you over 5840 characters
# Delete the registry key, then MERGE the copy back in
# Open the ODBC Data SOurce Administrator, and look in the 'Drivers' tab for the last driver that was in your Registry, you will see that it is cut off at the end!
E.g. My last entry is "IBM WTX Oracle Wire Protocol"="Installed" and this just shows up as IB in the 'Drivers' list, with 'Version' 'Company' columns etc all blank.
So if you are in a large organisation like ours, and no-one ever bothers to clear the things out, then even if you have the driver registered in the registry key , it will not show up if it is too far down the list.
Can I get a prize from Microsoft for finding a bug in their OS? I hereby name this the 'Blowtree Effect", and will happily take cash or a new iPad for my troubles!