ASP problem with the Oracle ODBC driver

[simianphile]

OK, I had a problem that I've now fixed but I can't really understand
what was causing it in the first place. I have an intranet site that
uses basic authentication to allow users to view and update information
from an Oracle DB (ver 8.1.6 -- ancient, I know). Anyway, the site
worked fine as long as the machine accessing the ASP page was running
Win 2k but when an XP machine tried to view the page, the client got an
error:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers (0x80004005)
[Oracle][ODBC][Ora]ORA-12640: Authentication adapter initilization
failed

I tried googling the error and ran across a post that suggested using
the Microsoft ODBC driver for Oracle rather than the Oracle ODBC
driver. I made the change and things are working fine now. I guess my
question is why did this happen? If it was really an ODBC driver
problem it would seem to have occured regardless or the OS of the
requesting machine. (After all, this is requested through HTTP)

 

[Mark Schupp]

That particular error is usually associated with a setting the Net8
configuration files.

Solution is here: http://www.lazydba.com/oracle/0__14272.html

Through Oracle 8 we normally recommend using the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle
driver because the Oracle ODBC drivers have been unstable. Starting with
Oracle 9 you have to use the Oracle ODBC drivers because the Microsoft
driver doesn't support past Oracle 8. It does appear that the latest Oracle
ODBC drivers are more reliable than they have been in the past.

You might also want to have a look at using OLEDB because ODBC is
deprecated.