Install of Quicken Deluxe 2010 was a complete screw-up

Tom,

I had exactly the same problems with the sidebar and the transaction password.

To get rid of the sidebar: Control Panel -> Programs -> Windows Sidebar Properties and uncheck "Start Sidebar when Windows starts."

For the transaction password try capital letters instead of lower case.

Jerry

That's kind of what you get with Windows... do the same thing ten times, and get ten different results :-)

Sometimes upgrades go wonky, and uninstalling it, manually deleting any folders left over, clearing out temp files and caches, and then installing the new version from scratch works.

That's been my pet peeve today too.

A while back, I got a 2010 CD in the mail with a notice that support for my 2007 version was being withdrawn on 4/30. The package described how easy the upgrade would be and promised free tech support for the install.

Over the weekend, I tired the upgrade and it immediately failed with a message that it couldn't access the Quicken site. I turned to the brochure to see how to contact my "free tech support" and, surprise of surprises, no contact info.

I then went directly to Quicken.com expecting I could order directly from the site and still get the $20 discount offered in the mailing. Another surprise. I go through the entire checkout process and there is no upgrade price, so I cancel the purchase and go to "Contact Us."

And, whaddya know, phone contact is unavailable. So, I sent them an email and a day later I get a reply from someone who obviously does not speak English as a first language and he suggested I follow a link in his reply that will take me to a place that will schedule a callback from their tech support.

So, I can't have any easy direct contact with my free tech support.

The only feature of 2007 that I will lose come 4/30 is one online download of credit card info, which I can easily resort to doing manually when I get my monthly statement.

And, to add insult to injury, their discount price on the upgrade is $79. BJs warehouse has it for $65 and Amazon is even cheaper.

Intuit can keep 2010 and file it away in whatever deep dark recess they've apparently buried their customer service.

A few questions: What version of Windows did you try installing Q2010 in?

Was Q2007 originally installed in the same version of Windows?

Had you run Quicken since the last reboot before doing the install?

I've found that sometimes, it's best to do an upgrade after a fresh reboot, and NOT running the program beforehand. In some cases, try to disable any auto-start stuff related to it, like the Quicken Reminder.

Hi, Tom.

I'm amazed that you - and several others - have had such problems updating to Quicken Deluxe 2010.

I bought QD2010 from Office Max in October (for $39.99 after $20.00 Promotional Discount, plus sales tax, for a total of $43.29). It installed into my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 without any trauma, replacing my QD2009.

I don't recall any Sidebar issue or new password needed. In Vista, I did use the Sidebar and liked it, but it was a feature of Windows, not of Quicken. In Win7, the Gadgets just float anywhere I choose on the Desktop without being corralled in a Sidebar. In Quicken, I don't use a password except for my Password Vault for One Step Update.

RC

I had the same experience as you RC. I installed QD2010 over QD2008 with no issues at all on a Vista/Ultimate/64 system. When my HD crashed earlier this year, I replaced Vista with Windows 7 Home Premium and installed QD2010 again with absolutely no issues. No sidebar problems... no password problems.

I also don't use a password in QD2010 except for the password vault and OSD.

"R. C. White" wrote in news:7dCdneiGGsZwUVHWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@posted.grandecom:

Both Tom and I had amazingly similar problems with the Sidebar and transaction password that few if any others have reported.

A common thread is that we both installed Q2010 recently and I (and probably Tom) installed it under Vista SP2 with the latest patches and fixes to that OS. I'm now on R 8 of H&B. Every change to either Quicken or Windows runs the risk of exposing latent bugs that have unpredictable symptoms. If Tom also has a Dell computer (he didn't say) that's another huge commonality.

Let me assure Quicken users that Intuit has not been taken over by a bunch of morons who decided to inflict their users with the Sidebar. What obviously happened is that the Windows Startup mechanism got damaged so that some processes that were supposed to start didn't (that's why we both were missing icons in the Notification area) and at least one process (Sidebar) started that shouldn't have.

The Startup mechanism is unbelievably complicated and involves as many as 20 different files, folders and registry keys. [Take a look at pages 137-139 of Windows Vista Inside Out next time you're in a bookstore.] Microsoft seems to feel free to change how application installation programs interact with this mess, not just from OS to OS, but from Service Pack (SP) to SP and perhaps even with fixes within a SP. It doesn't surprise me at all that somehow, in our perhaps already-damaged Startup mechanisms, Tom and I both got a switch set that caused Sidebar to start.

The transaction password being converted to upper case is more puzzling. One could speculate that legacy code from the DOS days, when some users had Caps-only keyboards, might still be lurking in Quicken and that this code gets activated only if Venus is aligned with Mars and you have Caps Lock on at the time your Quicken DB is converted. This is wild but plausible speculation and it's stuff like this that compentent programmers look for when errors like this are reported by the user community.

The important point here is that Q2010 isn't a disaster. These were the only problems I had, they were easily fixed, and Q2010H&B is working like a charm. A big thanks from me to those of you in this group and elsewhere who got Intuit to fix the File Backup mechanism. Your feedback turned a bad design into a really nice feature that for me is worth the entire price of Q2010H&B.

Still, I hope Intuit will recognize that when at least two different users report the same problem it deserves investigation.

And that's the way I see it :-)

Jerry

Hi, Jerry.

Thanks for your feedback. You and Tom are both long-time regulars in this newsgroup and you both are quite competent computer users and Quicken wranglers. I don't have a clue as to why your problems happened or how to fix them, but Intuit certainly should investigate why the problems happened - and why they happened in your two specific cases.

Please let us know if you hear from Intuit or learn the answer to this question.

RC

I had a grumble about something similar to this a month or so back... and sort of got shot down.

I finally (accidentally) discovered a fix so that Q2010 deigned to accept my old MASTER password (i.e. wot doubled unknowingly in an earlier version as a transaction password as well).

For me, it was to use totally UPPER CASE in Q2010 when asked for an old transaction password, even though the prior master password was a mix.

Don't even ask me why I decided to try it, but it worked. And allowed me to set a new separate transaction password.

I'd be interested to hear whether that works for you, as it would suggest some sort of glitch.