Creating the 64-bit System DSN

Three choices in this dialog cause most support tickets: the right tool, the right tab, and leaving one field empty.

A DSN — Data Source Name — is a named connection registered with Windows. You create it once, and the connector refers to it by name. The dialog is small and the stakes are unexpectedly high: three of its choices are the ones that produce the confusing errors, and all three are easy to get wrong.

Steps

Open the 64-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator. Press Windows+R and run:
```
C:\Windows\System32\odbcad32.exe
```
Use that exact path. There are two copies of this tool on every 64-bit Windows machine, and the naming is backwards from what you’d guess: System32 holds the 64-bit one, SysWOW64 holds the 32-bit one. The 32-bit tool looks identical, creates a DSN the connector cannot see, and gives no hint that anything is wrong.
Go to the System DSN tab, not User DSN. A User DSN belongs to your Windows account. The connector runs as a Windows service, under a different account, and a User DSN is invisible to it. The connection will work when you test it here and fail the moment the connector tries it — a particularly annoying way to lose twenty minutes.
Click Add and choose the CData QuickBooks driver from the list of installed drivers.
Name it, and write the name down exactly. QuickBooks CData is a good default. You’ll type this into the connector, character for character, in the next lesson.
Set the URL to the gateway:
```
http://localhost:8166
```
Enter the gateway user and password — the ones you created in the gateway, not a QuickBooks login. You need them here so the Test Connection button works. You do not need to save the password: the connector sends its own copy from its encrypted settings every time it connects, so a DSN with no stored password is both fine and slightly safer.
Leave the company file path empty. This is the counter-intuitive one. When QuickBooks is open on the file — which is how the connector is designed to run — an empty path means “use whatever file is open,” and it always matches. Fill it in and it has to match the open file’s path exactly; a trailing difference, a mapped drive versus a UNC path, and QuickBooks refuses with “already has a company file open,” which sounds like a locking problem and is really a typo.
Press Test Connection, with QuickBooks open on the company file. If this is the first connection this machine has ever made, QuickBooks will now be showing you the authorization prompt from the previous lesson — switch to QuickBooks and answer it, then test again.
Click OK to save. The DSN now appears in the System DSN list.

Good to know

Test Connection passing here is not the same as the connector working. It proves the driver, the gateway, and QuickBooks all line up — under your Windows account. The System DSN tab is what carries that over to the service account. This is why step 2 matters more than it looks.
The DSN holds no Nymble credentials. It points at the gateway, nothing more. Your Nymble API keys live in the connector’s own encrypted configuration.
If the driver doesn’t appear in step 3, you’re almost certainly in the 32-bit administrator. Close it and go back to step 1.