Introduction Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a critical middleware API that allows Windows applications—from Microsoft Access and Excel to custom ERP software and reporting tools—to communicate with database management systems (DBMS) like SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others. On Windows 7, despite its sunset by Microsoft, millions of legacy systems still rely on properly configured ODBC drivers.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers and each driver has its own key under:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcinst.exe -q -d If you have PowerShell available on Windows 7 (installable via WMF), you can query the registry directly: