We run our SQL Server services using a low privileged domain account. That account is NOT a local admin on the OS. Only access I give the user account is assigned during install of SQL: full control over its mount points and then everything else is granted by the SQL Server 2005/2008 installer.

I need to create a linked server in SQL Server 2008 to an ODBC data source. So I remoted into the computer using my domain account, which is part of a group that DOES have local admin privs to the OS. I created a system DSN and configured it to connect to another SQL Server. The DSN works perfectly when I test it. However, when I try to create the linked server, I get an error.

It appears to me that the DSN is invisible to the domain account that SQL Server is running as. It seems that this problem is only happening to me on Windows 2008 servers. Does anybody know whether there's anything that you need to do after creating a DSN to make it visible for other users to access?