System Error 1114 from ODBC driver in Oracle XE Client

Question

Hello,
I am running into some problems connecting to our Oracle 10.1.0.2 database through the ODBC driver supplied with the Oracle XE Client. I set up a DSN, and the test was successful. I can get to the database using that DSN to import data into MS Access, but when I am having problems when I try to connect using a program I have written.
On the first connection, I use the following connection string:
DSN=orcl-xe
and I get the following response:
[28000] [Oracle][ODBC][Ora]ORA-01005: null password given; logon denied
which makes sense given that no password was provided.
On the second connection attempt, the user has entered an ID and password, and I use the following connection string:
DSN=orcl-xe;UID=mapper;PWD=brock01
This connection attempt, and subsequent attempts, result in the following error:
IM003] Specified driver could not be loaded due to system error 1114 (Oracle in XEClient)
The driver was loaded and responded to my first connection attempt, so I don't understand why the second attempt would fail like this. After the first attempt fails, my program frees the various environment and connection handles, so there shouldn't be any resource issues.
Can someone tell me what system error 1114 means? I saw some information in another forum that indicated that a DLL might be missing, but I've got C:\XEClient\bin as the first entry in my path, and the ORACLE_HOME environment variable is pointing to the correct directory. As far as I know, all of the required runtime DLLs are available in the path.
Thanks,
Bob

Answer 1

I have been developing an Excel application using the Oracle XE client. At first, it created an ADO connection, from which I opened a record set. After this, it created several new QueryTables. This worked great.
Later, among other things, I needed to reverse the order of those connections. After two weeks of wasted time, I finally realized that was why I started getting the "Specified driver..." error. If I used a file that created the connections in the original order, it worked. If I left Excel open, the file that had the connections in the opposite order also worked. However, if I closed Excel and then tried the file that had them in the "bad" order first, it failed.
Somehow, just having created an ADO connection, even in a different file, even closing it and destroying the object, Excel remembered it and knew how to create the QueryTables. By the way, before I realized how to work around it, I noticed that I could create QueryTables in the front end and browse the data through Microsoft Query, but it would fail with the error when I tried to bring the data into a worksheet.
My workaround was to open an ADO connection, close it, and destroy the object BEFORE trying to create the QueryTables. It works, but I can't believe the time I had to waste getting there.