How to remove extraneous ODBC drivers?

[Guest]

Howdy, y'all; I'm establishing ODBC connections to an old Paradox/DOS app for
the purpose of refactoring the schema. The ODBC Data Source Administrator
shows many ODBC drivers installed (e.g., "Driver da Microsoft para arquivos
texto") that I'll never use. How can I get rid of them? The ODBC DSA doesn't
expose an uninstall widget.

TIA.

APJ
San Jose, CA.

 

[DL]

Why bother?
The win installation installs all manner of files that you may not have a
use for.

 

[Guest]

With a little more research, I discovered an answer to my question.

The ODBC driver names list is in the registry; see the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers

Furthermore, if you want a deeper perspective about this topic, there's a
Scripting Guys article about developing a script to view the installed
drivers
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/jul05/hey0707.mspx

Inspecting the above registry key showed that the non-English ODBC driver
names usually mapped to the same driver as that with an English name;.e.g.,
"Microsoft Paradox-Treiber" (German, dontcha know) maps to the same driver
dynamic link library (on a Windows 2000 system, it's
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\ODBCJT32.DLL)as "Microsoft Paradox Driver."

So you can safely remove the language-irrelevant driver names from the
registry, and they won't appear in the Data Sources Control Panel applet
list. You can even remove the DLLs from %systemroot%\:SYSTEM32 if you don't
think that they'll ever be used. If you're an ODBC admin, this solution is
cleaner and less confusing for your users.

APJ
San Jose, CA.

 

[Cindy Winegarden]

Hi Andy,

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Guest]

Always happy to share, Cindy.

Is this the most appropriate group for posting ODBC questions? Coupla issues
that I've yet to resolve involving an ODBC connection to a Paradox 4.x table
set.

APJ
San Jose, CA.

 

[Cindy Winegarden]

Hi Andy,

microsoft.public.data.odbc would be more appropriate.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.data.odbc&lang=en&cr=US