Slow loading

I have recently installed Quickbooks Premier 2004 and find that it takes about 40 seconds to load after my computer has been shut off or comes up from standby. Is this normal? Any suggestions for speeding things up? I have a Toshiba laptop running a Celeron 2.8 Ghz processor with 512 MB of ram and

34GB free space on a 60GB HD.
Reply to
Razor
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I'm assuming that you are running QB locally on the laptop ... and aren't hooking it up to the network and accessing the file remotely?

Outside of possibly bumping up the laptop's memory (which might only speed it up a tiny %) there's a few things you can try:

  1. Defrag the drive - Loading the program and the data file takes alot longer is they're both really fragmented on your drive
  2. Make sure nothing else is running on the machine - other programs, startup programs, background tasks?
  3. Disable any services from running that you don't need to have running - there are a few good guides out there for limiting which services you can disable
  4. With 512MB you could load Windows directly into memory (which theoretically speeds some things up). This would be better with a full GB of memory, but you could still try it with 512MB.[1]
  5. Do you have an A.nti V.irus software running? You could exclude the QB directory from AV scanning. I've seen some versions of AV software slow down QuickBooks load times, normal operation and everything in between. This is something you'd have to carefully consider though.
  6. Spyware/malware running on your machine? - You might want to look into getting two programs for scanning & removing malware: 'AdAware' and 'SpyBot Search and Destroy' - both are free for non commercial use and work really well.

Then inside of QB:

  1. If you're saving the desktop within QB go ahead and disable it. If you frequently leave reports and such up when you close out they'll all have to calculate again when you open up QB which adds a bunch of time to the opening process.
  2. Make sure you have a clean as you can have it data file, as in: a. Resort all your lists within QB (in case there's damage), b. Rebuild the data file and then verify it to make sure there's no damage. Data damage and list damage can really slow things down.
  3. Do you need all of the data in the data file ... or would running a condense be ok? Do you have more than a few years worth of data? ALWAYS make a backup before you do a condense.

Before trying any of this stuff I'd time how long it takes to open the data file without doing anything, then try the above and then time it again. I'd be curious to see if/how much it speeds up.

=Anyone else have any ideas?

At the end of the day, QB takes a lot in the way of resources, and opening the program can take a bit. 40 seconds does seem a bit long, but then, I don't know how large your data file is, if it's damaged, what else is running on your machine etc.

-Elw00de

[1] Someone else mentioned how to do this in a previous post to this group. You have to make a small change to the registry. I've done this on my personal machine when I set it up a year ago (I have a GB of ram). Subjectively, it seems to have speeded up things a bit. I never benchmarked anything though. [2] Once you start the rebuild - just let it go - depending on the size of your file and if it's damaged or not, I've seen it take anywhere from minutes, to hours, to days in some cases). Just let go ... [3] [3] Just like Luke did in Star Wars when he was flying in to the DeathStar to take his shot and he had already lost R2, and instead of engaging the targeting system he just trusted in the force. Obi Wan told him to let go ... so he did, He made the shot, just like he had shot all those innocent and cuddly womp rats in Beggars canyon. He Destroyed the DeathStar, got the girl (Ewwww...) and saved the day. You get the idea ...
Reply to
elw00d

Then what you are saying is, if all else fails look to the force. Wise words, I shall fashion my life from this day forward on them.

Reply to
Allan Martin

And thus Darth Martin is released upon our world.

-- Leo

Reply to
Leo Navoichick

My Pentium IV 1.5 GHz takes 70 seconds, but then I'm in the process of replacing it before I go beserk and smash it to pieces out of frustration.

Ken

Reply to
Ken

My AMD Athlon 3000+ (2.16 GHz) loads QB 2005 Premier Accountant in about 30 seconds with IE and OE running.

Reply to
Kent Finnell

Reply to
none

Mine loads in about 5 seconds on a P4 1.8

The file is a little over 42 MB

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Reply to
John

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