How to run applications which use Oracle 10g client on window 7 64 bit?

Question

I am getting error "[Oracle][ODBC][Ora] ORA- 12154: TNS: could not resolve the connect identifier specified." when I am trying to connect to remote database using 3rd party software. I am using Windows 7 64 OS and Oracle 10g 32 bit client. I have tried all the solution given on stackoverflow, but unable to solve the issue on the following links.

Ora 12154 error

ODP.NET ORA-12154 TNS error only when run as service

Oracle (0x80004005)ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier

ORA-12154 could not resolve the connect identifier specified

Update

As per the link below from Oracle one needs to install Oracle 10.2.0.5 patch to run on Windows 7. Please let me know where to find this patch as it is not available to download free from Oracle's website.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/relnotes.102/b14264/toc.htm

Update 2:

I found another link which says that I need to have the same version of ODBC manager as that of the Oracle Client. Hence now this sums up to that I need the version 10.0.2.5 of both Oracle client and of ODBC manager. But what I found is that there are 2 different versions of ODBC manager in my computer. One is at C:\Windows\System32 and other at C:\Windows\SysWOW64. After some googling I came to know that WOW (Windows on Windows) is used for running 32 bit applications in 64 bit Windows OS. When I test the connection to database through ODBC manager in System32 folder, it gets connected but when I try to connect to the same database through an application I get the following error: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager]Driver's SQLAllocHandle on SQL_HANDLE_ENV failed. Could it be possible that the applications on my system try to connect to the Database through the ODBC manager which is not working properly (inside SysWOW64 folder)? Please let me know how to solve this and if there is some information that I may be missing to provide.

Answer 1

Make the following changes in the Oracle 10.2.0.3.0 and install after these changes

Extract the Oracle client 10.2.0.3.0 setup from 10203_vista_w2k8_x86_production_client.zip file and make the changes as given below.

Edit refhost.xml from client\Disk1\stage\prereq\client and client\Disk1\stage\prereq\client_prereqs\client location and add following line inside CERTIFIED_SYSTEMS tag.

<!--Microsoft Windows 7-->
<OPERATING_SYSTEM>
<VERSION VALUE="6.1"/></OPERATING_SYSTEM>
<!--Microsoft Windows 7-->
<OPERATING_SYSTEM>
<VERSION VALUE="6.0"/>
</OPERATING_SYSTEM>
<!--Microsoft Windows 7-->
<OPERATING_SYSTEM>
<VERSION VALUE="6.2"/>
</OPERATING_SYSTEM>

Edit oraparam.ini file and add the following part(6.0,6.1,6.2) in the file in the Windows parameter.

 Windows=5.0,5.1,5.2,6.0,6.1,6.2