Here's what I have got so far.

1. Windows 2008 Server 64 bit.
2. Installed the latest version of ejabberd, ejabberd-2.1.8-windows-installer.exe.
3. The windows service starts up fine but seems ineffective. However, using the start & stop scripts work. I am able to login to the admin page which so far doesn't seem that versatile.
4. Opened up ports 5222, 5226 and 5280 for my workstation to talk to the server.
5. I've got Spark and Jabbear Windows clients to register, login and instant message with multiple accounts using the server.

After confirming that I've got the very basics working, I've decided to make use of SQL Server 2008 as the database. Reason? Mainly, I am very comfortable with SQL Server. I can deal with redundancy, failover, data analysis easily. Not sure if ejabberd's built in DB provides all that.

1. Following the instructions from ejabberd's documentation, I setup a system DSN that points to another physical database. The DSN checks out fine. (Tried both Named Pipes and TCP/IP)
2. Modified ejabberd.cfg. Commented line %%{auth_method, internal} and uncommented line {auth_method, odbc}
3. Uncommented and modified {odbc_server, "DSN=ejabberd;UID=somelogin;PWD=somepassword"}.
4. After making these changes, I restarted. No errors are found in the log files.
5. The jabber clients are no longer able to register new accounts. I'm not sure where to look for errors besides the /logs/ folder as I'm new to all this.

I am basically stuck here on step 5. Has anyone got this setup to work recently? Some of the posts I've found around are years old and of no help. I can't be the only one setting up ejabberd with MS SQL. Any help would be appreciated!