Change Odbc Password In A Network

[Guest Oskarhn]

Hi everyone!

I am working in a big company with several offices and we need change our SQL password, but that mean we'll need change the ODBC configuration in each computer, my question is

Exist a procedure to change this password on a network automatically?

Thanks!

[Guest ABD Solutions]

Hi Oskarhn,

If you are part of a large corporate network, you may well be using Microsoft Operations Management Server (MOM) or Systems Management Server (SMS). Using either one of these products will allow you to roll out system wide changes to dekstops in one go.

The updates that I am guessing you will need to make will be to the User DSN and the System DSN on each machine, and these changes can easily made through merging a registry file (.reg) into the local registry of each machine. Once the .reg file has been created it can be packaged as an SMS package which will be automatically installed next time a user logs on to the workstation once it has been deployed through SMS.

If you do not use either of these products, but have the remote registry service running on the workstations (as is often the case in a Windows domain network) you could manually apply the changes to the desktops over the network without leaving your chair. This could also be accomplished over RDP if you have XP clients on the domain.

For downlevel clients, such as Windows 95, 98, Me and NT 4.0, there is not a lot you can do. If you are using SMS or MOM, they can be remotely updated, but if not, they will each have to be visited unless you have some remote admin software installed on them such as VNC, RAdmin or PCAnywhere.

The local users cannot install the required registry updates as they will not (or should not) have administrative rights, so will not be able to alter the registry to add the System DSNs, however, they should be able to change the User DSNs. If it is only User DSNs you require to change, you can create or add to a logon script for each required user to call the .reg file from a network share they have access to, and merge it into the registry during logon. Once each user has logged on, you can then delete the lines from the logon script that add the registry entries, or just leave them as it shuld do no harm.

[WatchdogSecurity]

You should be able to use a logon script to do this along with the relavent VBS file, using either group policy or simply a run one batchfile in users profile.

[Guest ABD Solutions]

Good call Watchdog,

This definitely can also be done using group policy and some VBS, don't know how I left that one out!