Why my quickbooks 2003 will not open?

Your computer's broke.

:) no, my computer works fine except for quickbooks program don't work i'm going to try to find the original program CD and reload it and hopefully it will work again and most important not lose all my information

1. If your company file resides at C:/Program Files/Intuit/Quickbooks then move it to a safe place with easy access, like your Desktop.
2. Using Add/Remove Programs, uninstall Quickbooks

1. Reboot.

2. Reinstall Quickbooks.

1. Move your company file back to C:/Program Files/Intuit/Quickbooks OR the destination of your choice.

Don't try to reinstall over an existing corrupt installation as you'll only compound your problem.

No, our QB2003 still works fine. Very soon, the payroll function on our QB2003 will not work, but the rest will continue working.

I agree that you should make several backup copies of your QB data file, including backups that are NOT stored on your computer.

You said you haven't found your QB2003 program disks yet. But, regardless of whether you find them or not, you may want to try "system restore" before trying the uninstall/reinstall process. It's possible that if you restore your system back to a point in time when everything was working, that it will work correctly again as it should. In system restore, look to see what events took place around the time when your QB stopped working correctly. For example, maybe you installed another program and that caused a problem or conflict with your QB.

The only thing I'd add to this is:

Before you reinstall QuickBooks, under Program Files, under Common Files, rename the old Intuit folder to OLDIntuit (you may need to reinstall other Intuit software after doing this), then when you reinstall QuickBooks, reinstall to a clean directory (substitute QB for QuickBooks for example). Reboot. Download the latest patch for 2003 to the desktop. Install it. When it completes, reboot the machine and then,

Then open up QuickBooks and point it to the data file and open it up.

This should fix you up in almost all instances.

-Anon

Usually 2003 gives a white screen of death. Sometimes you can get one of the navagators to come up and then it will work, but you need to fix the problem.

You might see if QB will open up the company sample file.

No they didn't do that. You've got a software conflict.

All I have to add is in one case we had, not only did we have to reinstall QB but also had to reinstall the system as somehow QB had screwed up the system.

Once it is all back working, rebuild the company file!