Installing an ODBC for 11g on Win 7 64 Bit Nearly Impossible

I'll try that. I keep reading you needed the ODBC 32 bit tool in the WOW64 folder. I even downloaded an instant client ap into the main directory with these simple directions. Oracle really goes all out to make their products enjoyable:

• Unzip the ODBC Instant Client package, then execute the odbc_install script.

• By default English(US) DLLs, files will be installed.
• To install the Japanese version ODBC Driver, mention the JA option with install script.
  • C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2>  odbc_install JA
• The ODBC install script will check for oci.dll, oraociei11.dll, orannzsbb11.dll  at present directory.  If any of these DLLs are missing, installation will fail.
• Oracle Instant Client directory (present directory) name will be part of the driver name in registry.
  • Driver name will be "Oracle in instantclient_11_2".

• After the installation the environment needs to be configured in the following way.
  • Add the directory to the PATH system environment variable.
    • Otherwise ODBC manager will be not able to load/find the driver.

• Define the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to point the .ora files directory for OCI.

• This must be set for OCI to resolve the TNS name.
• If TNS_ADMIN is not set, OCI will examine an operating system dependent set of directories to find tnsnames.ora. This search path includes looking in the directory %ORACLE_HOME%/network/admin/tnsnames.ora. This is the only reason to set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable for Oracle Instant Client. If ORACLE_HOME is set when running Instant Client applications, it must be set to a directory where Instant Client exists (in this case C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2).  If ORACLE_HOME is not set, then looks in current directory for tnsnames.ora.
• Set any Oracle globalization variables required for your locale. See the Oracle Database 11g Globalization Support Guide for more information.
  • For example on Windows to set NLS_LANG:
    • set NLS_LANG=JAPANESE_JAPAN.JA16EUC