By default, AQT is installed as a 32-bit application. When you install AQT on a 64-bit machine, a 64-bit version of AQT will also be installed - you will have icons on your desktop for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of AQT.
On a Windows 64-bit machine you have the choice of running either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of AQT. Which one you will use will depend on the the ODBC Datasource you are wishing to connect to:
On the Signon window you will be shown a list of datasources. On a 64-bit machine this can be confusing, as this list can contain some datasources you will be unable to connect to. In addition some of your ODBC Datasources may not appear in this list.
This list contains:
You may not be able to connect to all the User Datasources as some of these may be incompatible with the version of AQT you are running.
Note that you cannot tell from this list which are System and which are User Datasources, nor can you tell which are 32-bit or 64-bit datasources.
If you attempt to connect to connect to a datasource that uses an incompatible ODBC driver, you will get the message:
Data source name not found and no default driver specified
or
The specified DSN contains an architectural mismatch between the Driver and Application
The solution is to connect to this datasource using the appropriate version of AQT (32-bit or 64-bit).
This is described in more detail in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942976
You can add new datasources with the New button or ODBC Admin > Add. In both these cases you will only see the Drivers which are appropriate for that architecture of Windows. In other words, adding datasources in this way works well.
Configuring existing datasources runs into the same problem as mentioned in the previous section. The list of datasources may contain datasources which are not valid for that version of Windows. Clicking on Configure or ODBC Admin > Configure can give you the message:
The setup routines for xxxx ODBC Driver cannot be found
The solution here is to use the appropriate version of AQT for that datasource.
When you attempt to connect to an Oracle database, you may get the message:
TNS could not resolve the connect identifier
There are a number of possible causes of this error message - see Oracle - Diagnosing Connection Problems. However, there is a problem in the 64-bit Windows environment that may be responsible for this problem. This is discussed below.
By default, AQT will be installed into C:\Program Files (x86)\Advanced Query Tool. The Program Files (x86) directory structure is used for 32-bit applications. However there is a bug in the Oracle client - when you run a program which has a bracket in the path, the Oracle client will fail to parse tnsnames.ora correctly, resulting in the above message.
The resolution to this problem is to install AQT into a directory that doesn't have a bracket in the name.