silent failure while creating odbc data source

Question

I just got really confused trying to create an ODBC data source in Windows 2003 R2.

I can create a connection to my chosen server (a MS SQL Server) on the "user DSN" tab, but when I try to do the same thing on the "system DSN tab", the process fails but without an error message.

I am able to connect to the target database fine at the end of configuring a new data source, but when I click OK, the data source just isn't there. No error message, no sign that anything went amiss, other than the lack of a new data source. Very annoying, as I had to repeat the process a few times to make sure I wasn't crazy. Anybody got any hints? I suspect it is a permission problem of some sort but since there is no error message, I don't know where to start.

Answer 1

Sigh. Definitely a permissions problem. When I log in as an Administrator I can create the System DSN no problem. I would still like to know why there is no error message when I am doing it as a non admin though.