To run the program you must have the Microsoft .NET Framework on your Windows 98, Me, or XP PC. This is also known as the CLR or Common Language Runtime. If you run the program and get the error message "A required dll, MSCOREE.dll can not be found", or the message "The application failed to initialize properly", you don't have the framework installed. It can be downloaded from Windows Update. This is also linked from the top of your Start Menu, or a direct link is here. If you use this direct link, save the file to your disk, then execute it. The two other methods do the install by themselves. Restart your PC.
After you have downloaded the framework, you must also update it to work with ODBC databases by clicking this link and choosing "OPEN" or "Save to Disk". Open will do the install itself. If you save the file to your disk, you must then execute it. Restart your PC. This will update the CLR to include support for ODBC, and after restarting your PC AND if you have Windows XP you should be ready to go. For earlier versions of windows, you may need more updates as described below. When you run the ILGdb program, if you get the error message "An unhandleable exception has occured in your application. File or assembly name Microsoft.Data.Odbc, or one of its dependencies, was not found.", it means you haven't updated the CLR as described at the beginning of this paragraph.
If you have done the above and still are getting error messages, you are not running the latest version of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC). You need version 2.7 RTM which contains core components, including the Microsoft SQL Server™ and Oracle OLE database provider and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) driver. This release contains the same version of the MDAC components that are installed by Windows XP. You may also need the desktop drivers (Jet 4.0 Service Pack 3). Follow these instructions to install the updates:
You should be OK at this point if you have Win2000 or WinME. If you still have error messages, you need the Jet 4.0 service pack.
Now you can execute the program and everything will work OK (my fondest hope!). The above is so complicated that I don't believe anyone will end up using this program unless it just happens to work without any other downloads. And Windows XP was supposed to make everything so much easier!