--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:

>
> At 10:40 AM 13/02/2012, you wrote:
>
> >> Try:
> >> isql "localhost:C:\Program Files
> >> (x86)\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\examples\employee.fdb" -user sysdba -password masterkey
> >>
> >> ./heLen
> >>
> >
> >...Also, IB_SQL still cannot access that same employee.fdb that was opened with isql and localhost:
>
> Meaning something is wrong in your setup...that said, Firebird 1.5 had problems with Vista and Windows 7, due to its age. It predated both. isql tries first to load the client from the current directory. Other apps, particularly very old ones, may not.
>
> Check the property sheet of gds32.dll in your 32-bit system directory. It might be an InterBase one, in which case it won't find a Firebird server unless it is itself very old. Rename it to something else, e.g., gds32_.dll and run instclient.exe from Firebird's bin directory (run it with no switches to get a summary of switches - you want the generated client to write to your system directory with the name "gds32.dll").
>
> Also, start IB_SQL and Check the About... button on the Layout tab. Report the version of IBO it was built with. Apps built with very old versions of IBO had to be told where to find the client library if it wasn't in ..\system32\gds32.dll. On Vista and Win 7 64-bit, your IB_SQL or your Firebird version (or both) could be tricky.
>
> ./heLen
>

Helen,

I appreciate your detailed attention to this.

After using the skills that you and Thomas introduced me to and finding that things still weren't working correctly, my intuition was that my system had become unstable. I have had the displeasure of various Win7 x64 instabilities that also may be exacerbated by the file manager I use, PowerDesk, which I have come to suspect, in its current and later incarnations, is contributing to my system instabilities.

As such, I suspected (hoped ;) that accessing a recent system restore point might help, and it did!

I can now access my Delphi/Firebird applications as normal.

Thanks both of you for helping me get to this troubleshooting/restore point.

Barry