Exporting ODBC System DSNs from a windows 2003 machine?

Question

Is there a way to export all the ODBC System DSNs from a windows 2003 machine?

Answer 1

System DSN information is stored under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI registry key. You could export that key to a .reg file and import on another machine.

UPDATE:

You can also do it programmatically. Here are a few examples:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/DSNAdmin.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/110507

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2004/11/10/can-i-create-and-delete-a-dsn-using-a-script.aspx

Answer 2

I have just done this myself with a very simple bat script for 32bit ODBC sources

regedit /e c:\backup\odbc.reg "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ODBC\ODBC.INI"

and for the 64bit sources or if you are on a 32bit operating system:

regedit /e c:\backup\odbc.reg "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI"

This backs up all of the DSN's however you could then specify the DNS you want.

Answer 3

System DSN's are stored in windows registry under HKLM\Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI node So if you export this node to a *.reg file and run this reg file on a target machine, it should work.

The only thing, this reg file will contain some file paths which maybe computer specific, eg c:\WINNT\System32\bla-bla-bla.dll includes WINNT folder which on target machine may be called like WINDOWS. So you will need to spend a bit time to make sure all paths in *.reg file are correct for target machine where you would finally import.