question for John or R.C. White or anyone than might know

Hi, Jim.

Is that 64-bit Ultimate, or 32-bit? In Ultimate x64, I occasionally get a near-lockup when exiting Quicken. Task Manager tells me that "qw.exe *32" is using most of my CPU time. Sometimes I can wait it out, but usually I give up after a minute or so and End Process. Then I can start Quicken again immediately with no apparent ill effects.

,,,

Do you recall what article that was? My guess is that the suggested fix would have no effect on this problem - but it might IF you are running Quicken (x86, of course) in Vista x64, because of the "bitness" difference. (But remember, I'm an accountant, not a techie, so my understanding of thunking and other such programming details is extremely limited.)

And there should be no need to disable Aero unless your computer's graphics memory is limited. How much RAM does your system have, and how much on the graphics card? I've never run Vista with less than 2 GB and my ATI Radeon X1600 Pro has 512 MB; my lowest WEI (Windows Experience Index) component is

4.6 and that is for "Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero". What is the graphics score for your computer? (Hold the Start key like a Shift key while you press Pause/Break - in the upper right area on most keyboards. The System window should pop up on your screen. The WEI Rating is in the middle of the page; click on this and give it a few seconds to show you how your computer rates. It may be not powerful for Aero; the only cure would probably be to buy more RAM.)

I'm happy to report that I've never had the flickering screen problem, although I've seen it discussed a lot here.

OK. Then it SHOULD be as simple as inserting the Quicken CD and letting Autorun install it. Please tell us, step by step, exactly what happens when you do this. If you are logged in as an Administrator, it should "just work". Otherwise, you'll probably need to furnish Administrator credentials at some point. (I've not tried installing as a non-Administrator, so I don't know what happens in that case.) When the installation is done, run Quicken and browse to your QDF file and click on it. You should see Quicken start with your file loaded.

RC

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:19:08 -0600, "R. C. White" wrote:

Hi RC,

Thanks for responding, I have the 32 bit version of vista ultimate, I have a Nvidia video card with 256 video ram- not as much as your card but it should be plenty. I have 4 GB Ram and my rating is 4.6 also. My system is running fine now with all the vista features etc. enabled. The only thing that has given me any trouble at all is the quicken program which isn't install at the point as I said) . When I installed it before It installs and updates without any trouble - downloads my account information with no trouble but then after going to different locations in the program (different tabs etc.) I'll get the launcher error. It's not always the same tab or sequence - it's random. The only thing that I can do then is exit the program. After that within a minute or so the desktop windows manager crashes. I have to reboot then to get things straight again. I put this phase into a google search and it seems that it's another name for the desktop composition that I mentioned in my original post. I put disable desktop composition into another google search and got articles about the option on the application's properties box (compatibility tab) and the Microsoft article. Like you, I don't hold a great deal of hope for this as a fix, but they do mention the desktop windows manager which crashes on me with the launcher error so who knows lol. I going to give it a try and keep my fingers crossed. I'll post back with the results. Thanks again.

Jim

I can't be of an help with Vista issues, but I do know that some Quicken users (I can't recall if they were using Vista) got around some Quicken problems by running Quicken in compatibility mode. Which compatibility mode also escapes me, but you could try a couple of them out.

And this is a real long shot, but if you have not already done so, I suggest you uncheck any One Step Update boxes related to Quicken.com to see if that has any effect.

By the way, I don't think you posted what release you're on. If you haven't tried R3 yet, I suggest you do.

Hi John,

I was on R2 - haven tried with the latest patch (R3) but am going to do so. I tried some of the compatibility modes (windows XP). I also tried the windows 98 mode as some people on the web based forum said worked for them, but it was really slow and sluggish and introduced other errors (trouble with printing etc.) That fix seemed rather strange anyway - reaching back that far and the result were unacceptable to me. Is there any info listed anywhere on what the R3 patch is supposed to address. I think I saw in you post that it does fix the downloaded transactions not showing at the bottom of the register Am wondering what else it resolved. Thanks for your help. I'll try it and post back.

Jim

Somewhere in the dialog to update to R3, there is a description of its release notes.

Someone in the Quicken Forums posted them, so here is a copy of that post.

Quicken 2009 Release 3 Notes

Online Banking Fixed an issue where Compare to Register did not refresh with downloaded transactions after completing a download with the account open.

Bill Management Resolved an issue where changing the payment method in the scheduled transaction when entering the scheduled transaction into the register was not kept.

Fixed an issue where Quicken would show a future date in the One Step Update summary for Outlook Bills Sync..

Image Attachment Resolved a problem where attached images were not showing up due to Windows security privilege settings

Crash Error Reports Fixed several Crash Reports submitted by Quicken Customers.

Resolved a race condition flaw in startup logic. It may be possible to exploit this problem in a manner to cause arbitrary code execution.

Thanks John,

R3 sounds promising, I'm going to install the program again today and see what happens. Thank for all your help.

Jim