ORA-12154 or ORA-6413 Running 32-bit Oracle Software on 64-bit Windows OS

Applies to:

Oracle Net Services – Version: 8.1.7.0 to 10.2.0.1
Oracle Data Provider for .NET – Version: 8.1.7.0 to 10.2.0.1
Oracle Objects for OLE – Version: 8.1.7.0 to 10.2.0.1
Oracle Provider for OLE DB – Version: 8.1.7.0 to 10.2.0.1
Oracle ODBC Driver – Version: 8.1.7.0 to 10.2.0.1
Microsoft Windows XP (64-bit Itanium)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (64-bit Itanium)
Microsoft Windows XP (64-bit AMD64 and Intel EM64T)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (64-bit AMD64 and Intel EM64T)

Symptoms

You are attempting to connect to the Oracle database from a Windows platform using one of the following programmatic interfaces

• ODBC
• OLEDB
• OO4O
• ODP.NET

after installing 32-bit Oracle client software on a 64-bit Windows operating system (OS) you receive one of the following errors:

     ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified

        or

     ORA-6413: Connection not open.

Cause

64-bit Microsoft OS’s install 32-bit applications into the following location

 "C:\Program Files (x86)\..."

rather than the typical location of

"C:\Program Files\..."

This causes an existing networking bug to occur where the networking layer is unable to parse program locations that contain parenthesis in the path to the executable which is attempting to connect to Oracle.

The following bug has been filed to correct this behavior:

    Bug 3807408 CANNOT EXTERNALLY AUTHENTICATE USER WITH QUOTE IN USERNAME

Additional Information
———————–

The reason you receive an ORA-12154 vs. an ORA-6413 is generally due to which programmatic interface you have chosen to use to connect to Oracle.

The ORA-12154 is the typical error seen when connecting with up-to-date interfaces using the latest version of the Oracle Call Interface (OCI):

• Oracle ODBC Driver
• Oracle Provider for OLE DB
• Oracle Objects for OLE
• Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)
• Microsoft’s .NET Managed Provider for Oracle

The ORA-6413 is typical of using older interfaces which make legacy API calls such as Oracle’s OCI Version 7 API:

• Microsoft ODBC Driver for Oracle
• Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle

Solution

To resolve this problem try either of the following solutions:

SOLUTION 1:

• Use a version of the Oracle client AND database software that contains the fix for Bug 3807408.  This fix requires that both the client and database software be patched.

      NOTE:  Currently this bug has not been resolved.  See SOLUTION 2 for now.

SOLUTION 2:

• Find the location of the application that is generating the error.  Check the path to this location and see if it contains any parenthesis.  If so, you must relocate the application to a directory without any parenthesis in the path.

SOLUTION 3:

Start the application using the short name version of the directory paths.  For example for the DTS Wizard in SQL Server 2005, run it using this command prompt:

C:\PROGRA~2\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\dtswizard.exe