In Windows, please confirm that when using special characters within a password string, the password stored is "mangled" when saving the string under the ODBC.INI datasource in the registry.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ODBC\ODBC.INI\
So to use a password in a .net app with an OdbcConnection, don't use the plain text password, instead use the ODBC.INI datasource saved mangled password.
Thank you,
Joe