User Cannot log on to Quickbooks

In case anyone else has this problem, I figured out a solution. I went to the directory that had the account file in it. (.QBW). There was also a .QBI file in that directory. I took a guess and renamed the .qbi file to .qbiold Then I had the user retry to login. Everything works fine now. Evidently the QBI file is a lock file of some sort. When she logged back in it created a new .QBI file.

-Dan

In the future, as I don't know if there's anything important in the .qbi file, you can:

A) Ctrl+Alt+Del on the machines with QB installed, but not open, and end the process QBW32.EXE if it shows up. That means the program hung.

B) Reboot workstations with QB installed. I find option A to be a much quicker workaround.

C) After performing either A or B reboot the host machine.

I've had something similar. Tried to switch to single user mode. Told me I couldn't because user A was logged in. User A's machine was off so I knew they couldn't be logged in.

Workaround is to quit QB and relaunch it.

In your case I suspect you needed to do that on all machines.

If a user logs in, then simply turns off their machine, how does the "server" know they've gone to lunch?

I think a user must affirmatively log off before QB believes she is truely gone.

Since the program is no longer running with that user logged in then the "server" should know that user is no longer logged in.

Problems with QB hanging a user login have existed since at least 2001, I want to say it happened with '99 as well. People usually don't Log Off so much as they shut the program down. This *should* automatically kill that user's login instance but sometimes it doesn't.

Thanks for the responses. I'll try the other options if it happens again.

It doesn;t seem to have lost any important info by renaming and letting it recreate the .qbi file. This may have caused issues if someone else was logged in when I did it, but it seems to hava had no ill effects.

-Dan

It knows because Intuit's programmers may be stupid but they aren't moronic idiots. When you chose to exit Quickbooks it sends a logout before it exits.

Even in a task manager --> end this task situation QB has to know the user isn't logged in any more.

It should know even if you simply disconnect the network cable! -- I note some laptops do exactly this when put to sleep!

It may be that QB updates the log in table only infrequently. I was thinking that in my case logging out and logging back in forced the update. I suspect that may be how it catches disconnected machines.

And if you don't exit? Exactly what commands are sent to the server if you simply power down the client machine?

"End this task" communicates with the task (or at least tries to do so) which, in turn, causes a log-off.

Try it. Log in, then unplug the client machine. Then see if you can log in to QB from another computer. Keep trying. Unless the server can interrogate the client machine and determine exactly what's running in the client machine's RAM, or, in the alternative, the client periodically informs the server that its still alive, the server has no way of knowing the status of the client.

You are assuming QB doesn't interrogate the client machine.