QEL files corrupt on one computer but fine on another

It occurred to me that I could run Quicken backup on the machine that works then restore the files to the one that doesn't. Would the restore kill all the download setups I have?

Depends on the date you created the setups and the date of your backup.

I believe you can run Validate on your fileset, but that may not find/fix the problem; especially if you have "Activated" online access to some of your Quicken accounts. But Quicken can reconstruct enough of the QEL file to operate (if you rename the corrupt QEL file); you may lose online account attributes (the "download setups") - which you can re-enter manually - and you may get more transactions downloaded next time you download than you would like. But this method - renaming or deleting the QEL file - has the advantage that your transactions remain current. If you have a backup from just before the problem, restoring that would probably be a better approach.

I can tell you that Intuit does not recommend network access to Quicken data; Intuit strongly believes that data corruption is inevitible if you access your data over a network. You may be fortunate in finding the corruption early on; as described to me, often the problem starts so small that Quicken doesn't notice and Validate can not catch it until long after damage is done (and good backups may have been overwritten), when the cumulative effect of lost network packets finally creates unmistakable damage.

There is actually no network access involved in this, not even a virtual network. The physical hardware is the same for the native XP machine and the XP virtual machine. The virtual machine uses the quicken files now perfectly and can take a backup before I try to restore. I think I'll try to install quicken in another vm and see if the restore works good there.

I guess it was the "two different computers" that threw me.

After a fresh validate on the working instance I was able to do a backup/restore on the non working one. All is well now. Very strange. I do not understand how the files can work on one computer and not on another, and exactly what the validate did that made the non working instance now work.