ok ,lets for the sake of argument say I've already tried those & to no avail.

I can't find tnsping

The 32 bit of the ODAC's has a Oracle Universal Installer while the 64 bit only has a batch file to install.

Trying to connect via sqlplus with both the tnsnames entry or directly on the address both fail.

It's a connection over a vpn

OK I can connect/tnsping to the database but not via tnsnames only directly