I haven't encountered any such problems when using VB6 frontends to create, display and update mySQL tables. Unfortunately, you didn't indicate which ODBC driver you are using, if the DB is ISAM or INNODB, or what the failing query and parameters were.
When I last worked with mySQL, I used v3.23.51, myODBC v3.51 driver, VB6 ADO and ADOX 2.5 objects on Win 98/NT systems. The majority of the WHERE statements had less than 5 AND and OR elements, but some of these are made up of multiple ANDs and ORs, up to a maximum of 15 elements.
Since my applications had to run with Oracle, mySQL and MSAccess backends, they generated SQL statements by appending common-language portions of the SQL command (such as select on) to auto-selected DB-unique elements (such as concatanation and date/time).
I suggest you check the query using your mySQL DB, not MSAccess or MSDE. Use mySQLfront or some other excellent tool available on the internet. It sounds like the parameter is incorrectly formatted, or isn't allowed in mySQL.