printing from 2008 home & business

Well, been searching through Google on this - and the only hits I get from the error message are related to Quicken, so it seems pretty clear that it's a Quicken issue that they are just not resolving. Does anyone know if it is being sorted in 2009 versions?

See if this helps:

Try the second part (renaming the wpr.dat file) even if the first part doesn't apply.

Jerry

Thanks, had already seen that after Googling - there isn't a wpr.dat file on my system.

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That's surprising. I have wpr.dat with Q08H&B and Vista 32-bit. It's in C:\\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\Config. [AppData is a hidden folder.]

When I switched from an HP network printer to a Lexmark USB printer everything worked fine except Quicken. When I tried to print or to use Quicken's File -> Printer Setup menu item I got the same error. Renaming wpr.dat and letting Quicken rebuild it solved the problem.

Either (1) you missed wpr.dat because you didn't search for hidden files and folders, (2) Quicken changed the design for 64-bit Vista or (3) my wpr.dat is a remnant from an earlier Quicken release and it was actually the magical incantation I uttered when renaming wpr.dat that fixed my problem.

Jerry

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Ah - now I did have a wpr.dat file in the location you gave (a different location to the one in the Quicken link) but letting it rebuild has solved nothing - still same error message.

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Sorry that didn't work and it's the only trick I know.

In trying an experiment on my system I managed to break my Quicken print mechanism then fix it again by renaming wpr.dat. There's definitely something wrong with the wpr.dat mechanism. Here's what I did but I don't know if it will help you figure out your problem:

(1) From the Quicken menu select File -> Printer Setup -> For Reports/Graphs. (2) The printer selected is Lexmark X5400 Series on Ne02 (my default printer). (3) Clicking the Settings box brings up a Lexmark-specific settings window. (4) Changing the selected printer to Microsoft XPS Document Writer on Ne01 seems to work. (5) Clicking the Settings box brings up the appropriate settings window. (6) Changing the selected printer back to Lexmark gives a "Problems communicating to printer: ..." error which recurs every time I select File -> Printer Setup -> For Reports/Graphs, but the "For Printing Checks" and "For Printing Invoices" menu items, both of which have the Lexmark printer selected, give no error message. (7) Repeating the File -> Printer Setup experiment for the other two menu items breaks them also. (8) Can't print anything from Quicken. (9) Printing works fine from Excel, Explorer, Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader. (10) Rename wpr.dat. (11) Quicken printing works fine again (didn't even have to exit Quicken).

Was your Canon printer your default system printer when you rebuilt wpr.dat? If not, maybe making it so will get you past your problem. Otherwise I'm out of ideas but perhaps someone else or Quicken support can help.

Jerry

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Only just saw your reply - I can't even get started on the path you followed - if I try to get to printer setup I'm just told there is no printer (can't recall the actual message) so I can't change or install anything. But my Canon printer IS the default, and works with EVERY OTHER piece of software.

As others have said it beggars belief that Intuit have not resolved this. If I didn't have so much data recorded in Quicken I would dump it yesterday.

I've been trying to find out if the 2009 version has resolved the problem and can't get a straight answer.

Many thanks for trying to help.

My take is different than yours.

First: even at the time of your post (Oct 21), there were quite a few reports of users "fixing" their Vista64 print problems by changing printer drivers. This is a reasonable indication that some of the problems may be in printer drivers, and not in Quicken.

Second: some non-Intuit software developers have reported what appears to be a bug in Vista, and one which sounds suspiciously like it could be involved in the problem you, and others, are seeing. (The Vista problem was reported as early as Jan 2008 at the MS developer's site; but the first time I saw it posted in the Quicken Forums was just recently, Nov 15.)

Check this thread, with particular attention to posts since around Nov 15 (and if you want more details, follow the link in one of those posts).

Hi John - I had seen that thread before and tried out all the suggestions, with no joy - I had added the suggested printer drivers, and still got messages in Quicken that it was unable to verify the printer at system level.

HOWEVER! Following your posting I decided to track through the thread again - removed the drivers I had added previously and then added them back again - and all of a sudden Quicken can actually see my real printer and I have been able to print to it.

What I didn't do was test to make sure it was still NOT working BEFORE I made these renewed attempts - so I suppose it is possible that some Vista update had fixed the problem without me realising it. Or it could have been something in the process of removing and reinstalling the "virtual" drivers that kickstarted something or other.

After weeks of struggling, who cares - it's working! I'm now going to clone my whole system before it stops again!!

Thanks for the input.

Hello again John - just thought I'd feed back the latest on this issue. Having suddenly been able to print, as reported in my last post, next day I was back to square one. So returned to the link you gave, and the later postings - moved my Quicken installation to a folder off the root directory (instead of Program files (x86)) - and it worked - and remains working after restarts!!!.

Whether this now indicates that the fault is in Vista or in Quicken is beyond me. My simple logic says that if every other piece of software works fine, and Quicken doesn't, other than by all this tweaking, then Quicken hasn't been written to work in the way that Vista works. But I do see that this problem only arises on some machines, so who knows. In any event I thank you again - I got there in the end with your help.

Regards

I believe that the the non-Intuit software developers reporting the Vista "printing" bug (described in the link, within the link, that I provided) also said that sometimes that bug could be overcome by installing in a folder other than Program Files.

One of the reasons I provided the specific link I did (there are a LOT of threads on printing in Vista in the Quicken Forums) was because it fairly clearly described a Vista bug that could prevent some applications from printing. There were several other applications besides Quicken that were mentioned as being affected ... but you may not be using any of those other applications. It was also noted that some other applications did not appear to be affected at all.

Glad you got it working. Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Vodil - I was the original OP in this thread. I can only reaffirm my last post (20-11-08 at 19:28) that having moved my Quicken installation to a folder off the root C:, instead of within Program Files (x86), the printing issue just went away - and has stayed away.