>>>Are you able to create a file DSN manually?
>>
>>Haven't tried that. I did create both a user DSN and a system DSN and both worked fine. I'm sure it's someting I'm leaving out or putting in incorrectly in the connection string.
>
>Just a couple of SWAGs:
>
>- what if you leave out the UID parameter altogether? If you leave it in, you might have to use something to show its value of "", maybe another CHR(0)
>
Tried that too <g>. Didn't work. I left the UID empty, single space, and an improvised character string.

>- I haven't used that call, are you sure CHR(0) is the delimiter? - it looks unusual to me.
>
The CHR(0)s are end-of-field markers needed for the call to SQLConfigDataSource (from odbccp32.dll) that Mark uses in his class.

>- do you see any difference if you expand the variables into literals for your connection string variable assignment?

I've tried just about everything from the command window, including all string literals.