OleDb issue on Visual Studio

Question

Dear Microsoft Support Team,

I am reaching out to seek assistance with an issue I am encountering while trying to use the OLE DB provider on a MacBook Pro with the M3 chip, running Windows 11 through Parallels.

I have been attempting to connect to a Microsoft Access database using the 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' or 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider within a Visual Studio project. However, I continuously receive an error stating that the provider is not registered on the local machine.

I have already tried the following steps:

Installed both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Access Database Engine.

Updated Parallels and Windows 11 to the latest versions.

Attempted to manually register the provider using regsvr32.

Verified that Visual Studio is running with appropriate administrative privileges.

Despite these efforts, the issue persists. I suspect that the ARM architecture of the M3 chip may be causing compatibility issues with the OLE DB providers, which are traditionally designed for x86/x64 architectures.

Could you please provide guidance on how to resolve this issue, or suggest any workarounds that would allow me to use OLE DB on this platform? Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your support.

Best regards,