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My company distributes an application that requires Sql Server 2008 R2 Express Edition. We use the Microsoft Offline installer for Sql and make exstensive use of the command line switches to get the installation configuration that we want.

All of that works fine.

The problem is that we have noticed that when we install our application on our own machines, our application works fine but it BREAKS ODBC connections to other applications. So we will install our app and great plains will stop working or another application we use that requires a pre-defined ODBC connection stops working.

We are concerned that this is happening to our customers but we are not getting calls because our customers don't know that our installer is what broke the other application.

The fix for this is very easy. First, when you go into ODBC Administration applet from Control Panel all of the pre-configured ODBC configurations that these other programs need are gone.

To get them back all you have to do is run the Sql 2005 Native Client installer. After running that 2005 native client installer all of the ODBC configurations Auto-Magically re-appear and the other apps start working just fine.

According to Microsoft all of the Native-Clients are supposed to play together nicely. (It is supposed to allow side-by-side installs) but that is clearly not happening.

This seems likely to be a Microsoft bug but I am wondering if others have seen this and have come up with a fix for it. Thanks for your help. I have found almost nothing about this problem on the internet.


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what version of windows are you installing on? –  Jim B May 31 '11 at 16:48
Jim B, This happened on both Windows 7 and Windows xp. –  Seth Spearman Jun 1 '11 at 13:25

1 Answer 1

This is quite strange. We use ODBC quite a bit as well, including various versions of SQL Server, and I have never seen this happen. It definitely sounds like a MS bug.

Does this happen when you manually install SQL Server 2008 Express as well? It might be something that you are doing with the scripted install.

Maybe you can try to just run the Sql 2005 Native Client installer after you install SQL 2008 R2 express? It shouldn't break anything. If it's already installed then it shouldn't do anything, and if it's not, it will install the missing ODBC drivers.

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Lucky,thanks for your answer. That's a good idea as a next step to see if it happens with a plain vanilla install of sql server express. Will keep you posted. –  Seth Spearman Jun 1 '11 at 13:27

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