DNG in Lightroom not recognising my camera

And some directions: Adobe Digital Negative Converter

And, no, the install does not create a shortcut, that is no surprise, it is a very very rudimentary app install wise.

Buntobox  wrote I am running Lightroom 3.6 on a 32 bit Windows 10 machine and I use a Sony Alpha A7 camera. I have downloaded and installed the DNG converter from the Adobe website (although it didn't create an icon that will launch it as an independent program).

Sounds like you did not download the DNG Converter from Adobe, or did not install it properly.

By any chance, did you download and install Adobe Camera Raw?

Lightroom then gives me the option of converting and importing my RAW files to DNG format but when I try to do so, an error shows up telling me that my camera is not recognised, even though its profile is present in the DNG converter's folder as installed in the Program Data folder of my PC's C drive. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Lightroom should not give you such an option after files have been converted to DNG. You simply need to import them using ADD or COPY or MOVE. An error saying the camera is not recognized indicates you still have the files in the RAW state, and not converted to DNG. So, are the files you have tried to convert and then import RAW or DNG (which end with .dng)?

The DNG converter is a stand alone program, Lightroom does not use the DNG converter.

The DNG Converter will not recognize your camera nor the card with the files.

First copy the image files from the camera or camera card to a folder on your computer.

Open the DNG Converter application and select the folder that contains the image files. Then the converter should recognize the files for conversion to the dng format.

Adobe DNG Converter Tutorial