Problem backing up file Q2006 Premeire

There is an Intuit kb article that says you must be logged on as an administrator to backup in Q2006; are you?

I missed that KB article in my search and logging in as admin fixed the problem. Thank you.

If any> James Aust>> When ever I try and backup a file, I get a dialog that pops up >> and

This is *really* stupid on Intuit's part. Haven't they heard of a thing called "SECURITY"?? For the vast majority of users out there it is not a good idea to have them run as admins. It's also an invitation for hackers....

Why do you assume it is intentional?

I wouldn't assume it's intentional, but this is a regression from Q2004, where there was a workaround.

In Q2004, I tracked down the problem to their backup trying to create a temporary file in the root directory of the drive you wanted to save your backup to. On an less privileged account, you do not have permission to create files in the root directory. The workaround was the SUBST command, as follows: 'subst s: v:\quicken_backups', backing up to s: solved the problem.

Now we get to Q2006 and the backup command kicks off the uninstaller and scrambles the program files (but not your data) and requires a reinstall. This bug is documented in a kb article for Q2005 and should have been fixed in Q2006. The backup feature borders between inconvenient and useless with this flaw.

Try asking a Linux user if they use their root account as their normal login and they will tell you (rightfully so), "No Way! That's Stupid!"

So many of these same users run their XP systems with admin rights all the time and think nothing of it.

It seems you misunderstood my comment (and to whom it was directed).

My only point was/is that it does not make sense to call something that was unintentional "stupid" in the way Hank did. If Intuit intended to restrict backups to administrators, that might be called stupid. If the limitation is a mistake on Intuit's part, calliing it stupid, in the sense that Intuit is too stupid to understand security, is just plain wrong.

To your comments I say: it is not necessary to backup from within Quicken, there is nothing special about a Quicken backup, it's just a copy of the fileset and can be done any number of other ways, logged on as a user without admin rights. It would be preferable to have backups from within Quicken work for any user ... just as it would be preferable for Quicken to have no bugs at all. But this problem has a simple workaround that does not involve any security issues at all.

Like it or not, Windows is still not a *real* multi-user OS. It gets closer with each release, but it's still not *there* yet. Linux, on the other hand, is a mature multi-user OS. ... If only Quicken ran on Linux!! Anyway, have you tried running Quicken with "Power User" privileges? I haven't, so I can't comment on Quicken per se. But I have lots of experience making software that wants Admin privs function using lesser priveleged accounts. In the past, Quicken worked with "Power User" privs, and I used it that way for quite a while. I'm currently running as local admin (though I'd *never* run as domain admin), because I've got too many apps to tweak. But my machine is behind hardware and software firewalls, and I run other security software -- and check my logs regularly.

Regards,

Margaret

I don't think it's intentional as much as a "don't care" attitude by Intuit. IMNSHO, they just don't think it's worth spending the programming resources to allow non-admins to use their products. They just don't get it......

It's "stupid". Either they don't care about security (stupid) or they just don't know that it is the case (stupid) or they are lazy (stupid) or ignorant (stupid) programmers.....

I stick by the comment.

I'd wager money you're wrong. I don't even understand how you can arrive at that conclusion without a shred of evidence (the only useful evidence for your conclusion would have to come from with Intuit). Interpreting other's mistakes as intentional (therefore not mistakes) or as the result of not caring or as the result of stupidity - without objectively verifiable evidence - falls in the same category as reading tea leaves.

I agree with John.

I don't think they are stupid or have a "Don't Care" attitude, but this bug bothers me. The KB article is from Q2005 and they have a documented bug that corrupts your Quicken installation (but not your data). Just fix it, or popup a message box saying insufficient privileges and not letting you scramble your installation.

I've been developing SW for windows for about 14 years, but try as I might, I just could not come up with a technical reason they couldn't fix this bug. All Quicken needs to do is copy a file, from a directory that you have read and write access to, to another directory you have read and write access to. This does not require administrator access.

To answer a previous posters question, the "Power User" group exhibits the problem.

Jim

Looks like the only thing we can agree on is to disagree..... I think we should consider this thread closed.....

I experienced a similar problem in Q2005. Whenever I tried to do a backup in my normal non-administrator account, it would complain about needing to re-install Quicken. I would dismiss the dialog box and then it would complain about not being able to do an on-line backup, which wasn't even what I was trying to do.

I fixed the first part by temporarily giving my normal account admin privs and then re-installing Quicken from within my normal account instead of the administrator account. When I removed admin privs from my normal account Quicken was still happy. Perhaps this will work for the Q2006 version as well.

The 2nd problem was due to Quicken trying to run an on-line backup program, I think in an attempt to convince me to sign up for the service. I found the program it was trying to run and then replaced the executable with a program that just exits immediately. Now it happily runs the dummy program and then allows me to do my normal backup.

The problem of running apps in non-admin accounts is part of the whole lack of security focus from Microsoft and their partners. It's simply not a priority for them. They make it nearly impossible for people to use non-privileged accounts and then blame their users for not keeping their computers secure when crackers intrude or the latest worm or virus infects the Internet.

I tried your suggestion of temporarily giving my account admin rights while installing and did a backup while I still had admin rights. It worked until I removed the admin rights.

I think Microsoft is getting the message the SW needs to run in less privileged accounts, others like Intuit are slower to figure this out. This is one of my favorite topics in SW development to sound off about, because it's so important these days.