[AccessD] Windows 7 64 bit

Dan Waters dwaters at usinternet.com
Wed Jan 20 15:57:07 CST 2010


Hi Drew,

Thanks for the info about the VPN call Shrew.  I also use Cisco VPN with one
client, and would like to upgrade to W7 64.

When I use Cisco, it completely blocks all my internet access (unlike two
other VPN clients I have).  Does Shrew allow internet access while it's
connected?

Thanks!
Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Drew Wutka
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:42 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [AccessD] Windows 7 64 bit

There's been some talk about Windows 7 on here, and since it going to be
hitting your user base, I figured I would share some 64 bit info.

I've been running 64 bit on my work desktop for about 2 years now.
(Vista until October when 7 was actually released).  I've now been
running 64 bit on my laptop for the last 3 months.

>From our user's standpoint, there were two issues that we had with 64
bit.  Oracle ODBC connections, and our Cisco VPN.  Everything else we
install on a typical machine works just fine on a 64 bit box.  There are
some 'admin' things that don't work in 64 bit, but I don't care much
about that, cause I use Virtual PC like it's my right arm, so I just
have that stuff in a VPC environment.

The Oracle thing was a show stopper though.  Our production database
(Glovia) is running in an Oracle database.  It used to be a Unix box,
but is now on a Window's based rack server.  The application for our
production database works just fine in a 64 bit environment, and doesn't
use an ODBC connection.  However, long before I got here, they were
using Access as a 'report engine' for Glovia.  So there are a handful of
these databases that need to connect to Oracle through an ODBC
connection, for all these reports to work.  

Problem #1.  Oracle doesn't make a 64 bit ODBC driver.  They do however
have ODAC101040.exe  which is an ODBC driver for Oracle 10g.  When
trying to install this several 'unknown' errors come up, and the install
fails. However, you can right click on it and select Troubleshoot
Compatibility, this then goes and let's you run the install without a
hitch.  Once that is done, the next trick is that the ODBC manager in
the control panel is a 64 bit manager.  To use the 32bit manager, you
have to go to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe .  Looks the same, but
this will then let you setup your ODBC connection.  Now, I got this part
done months ago, but ran into the next problem.

Problem #2.  I could 'test' the connection from the 32 bit ODBC
connection manager, successfully, but whenever I tried to use the ODBC
connection from Access, I would get 'ODBC Error'.  Sigh.  Well a few
weeks ago, an order was placed for a laptop for one of our accounting
people that I wanted to setup with a very decent laptop.  It came in
last week, but I was hesitant to put Windows 7 64 bit on it, because she
uses these ODBC tables all day long, and I didn't want to force her to
use a Remote Desktop session to a machine that had everything
working...so I dug into some more research, and guess what....the
problem was in WHERE Access was installed too.  On a 64 bit machine, 32
bit programs get installed (by default) to C:\Program Files (x86)\  and
those parenthesis' were tripping a bug in Oracle, cause apparently
whatever app tries to connect to the ODBC connection is sending along
it's full application path.  On my own desktop, by just moving
msaccess.exe to the root of one of my drives, the ODBC stuff started
working right away! Go figure!

The other 64 bit issue was the Cisco VPN client.  Apparently Cisco
refuses to make it's standard VPN client compatible with 64 bit
technology (which is weird, because Cisco is supposed to be so 'cutting
edge'...LOL).  So I found http://www.shrew.net/home a FREE 3rd party app
that let's you use Cisco .pcf files for configurations, and it connects
like a charm!  Woohoo.

Drew
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