Quicken 2004 Personal restore backup fails

Hi, John.

DP's solution should have worked. But you know that, I'm sure. So we'll have to dig deeper.

No, Quicken doesn't care (or even know) whether the data storage space is NTFS or FAT. And NTFS was the default file system in Windows 2000, over 3 years before Q2004 appeared. Only small (by today's standards) devices still typically use FATx.

My suggestion would be to boot into Q2004, then click File | Open and browse to your J: drive and click on the *.qdf file. Then +B and, for the destination, Browse to the folder you want on your HDD. After you get the confirmation that Backup was successful, Exit Quicken. Then, in Windows Explorer, browse to that folder on your HDD and click on the *.qdf file. That should start Quicken with your fileset loaded. Then you can +B and Backup from there to your choice of new Backup location. You can Backup to J: again after you are sure that you have a dependable working copy on your HDD.

If that doesn't work, please include your step-by-step procedures in your next post. Especially, tell us which Quicken steps you are using - or which other methods you are using to copy your files (Windows Explorer? Command Prompt window with Copy? Or Xcopy? Or something else/) You ARE moving ALL the related files, right? (.qtx, .qel, etc., in addition to .qdf) I THINK I know what you did, but I may be missing the critical clue.

RC

I rather thought that to be the case, but was clutching at straws.

I hadn't tried to start by clicking on the backed-up (or straight-copied) *.qdf file. Rather, I had opened Quicken and then navigated via File | Open or File | Restore Backup File to one of the many copies of that file that I'd created by copying or backing up. None of them would open or restore, irrespective of their method of creation.

Thanks for those cogent and cluey suggestions.

I rely on dragging and dropping to move or copy files. I hadn't thought that the Command Prompt or XCopy methods would offer any advantage.

Yes, a long time ago I sweated through the whole of Windows looking for Intuit-related files and made careful note of their names and precise locations. It's of course an 'elluva bind to seek them out and copy them across in practice, but in the past I've done it with reasonable success: last time (a year or more ago) the only things missing were the icons on the horizontal menu bar, but inserting the CD and running a reinstall fixed them.

My current situation is that I have deleted every vestige of Quicken

I suppose I could go back to my Quicken 2002 CD, try to install that, then see if the 2004 disc would install, but I fear me that the 2002 disc was itself an upgrade and I've long since thrown away the floppies going back to the 1980s when I first began with the program.

Therefore my current intention is to drag-and-drop the old PC's Quicken 2004 folder (plus as many Intuit-related files as I can find in Windows, Windows|System and Windows|System 32) across my LAN to the new PC. I'll then use the CD to install anything still missing by writing over-the-top; it should recognise the existing program and thus not object to doing its job.

I'm most grateful for your interest and expertise in this area; the mere fact that you posted at all improves my confidence and optimism no end!

I'll let you know how I go! JohnT

It's possible you did what I'm about to say (repeating advice in my original post), though I can't tell for sure from the wording of your reply. Once you've copied the files to your HDD, do NOT restart Quicken. Instead, go to the place on your HDD where you copied the files and then double-click on the file with the QDF extension. That should open Quicken to the QDF file that's on your HDD. And when you close out Quicken, it should update THAT file. Is that what you did?

Also, you say the method I proposed "made no difference." Can you clarify? It had to have made SOME difference. Your problem was it was refiling the data file to your flash drive. But if you've removed the flash drive, it can't possibly be doing that. So, what is it doing instead?

I rather thought that to be the case, but was clutching at straws.

I hadn't tried to start by clicking on the backed-up (or straight-copied) *.qdf file. Rather, I had opened Quicken and then navigated via File | Open or File | Restore Backup File to one of the many copies of that file that I'd created by copying or backing up. None of them would open or restore, irrespective of their method of creation.

Thanks for those cogent and cluey suggestions.

I rely on dragging and dropping to move or copy files. I hadn't thought that the Command Prompt or XCopy methods would offer any advantage.

Yes, a long time ago I sweated through the whole of Windows looking for Intuit-related files and made careful note of their names and precise locations. It's of course an 'elluva bind to seek them out and copy them across in practice, but in the past I've done it with reasonable success: last time (a year or more ago) the only things missing were the icons on the horizontal menu bar, but inserting the CD and running a reinstall fixed them.

My current situation is that I have deleted every vestige of Quicken

I suppose I could go back to my Quicken 2002 CD, try to install that, then see if the 2004 disc would install, but I fear me that the 2002 disc was itself an upgrade and I've long since thrown away the floppies going back to the 1980s when I first began with the program.

Therefore my current intention is to drag-and-drop the old PC's Quicken 2004 folder (plus as many Intuit-related files as I can find in Windows, Windows|System and Windows|System 32) across my LAN to the new PC. I'll then use the CD to install anything still missing by writing over-the-top; it should recognise the existing program and thus not object to doing its job.

I'm most grateful for your interest and expertise in this area; the mere fact that you posted at all improves my confidence and optimism no end!

I'll let you know how I go!

PS Since drafting the above I have carried out my intentions and thereby improved my situation considerably. A parallel posting will spell out the detail if you can bear to wade through it!

I've tried copying the six data files to the HDD, placing them either in a) the main Quicken 2004 folder, or b) a separate data folder. I have also backed them up to yet another dedicated folder. All sets of files appear identical in content, date and size.

I've now reached the stage where I have removed the flash drive, copied the Quicken folder by drag-and-drop from the old PC, done the same for the Intuit-related files located in Windows, Windows|System and Windows|System 32. Then I have reinstalled from the CD. (The copying across is necessary because my version is an update one and won't install to a "virgin" HDD.)

Thus currently -

a) If I click on the QDF file in the main Quicken folder, Quicken will start at the new user setup screen. Trying then to open the QDF file, either from the "recent files" list in that main folder or by browsing gives a "Cannot open File" message.

b) If I click on the QDF file in the separate data folder, on the first occasion I had success, with everything working well. (I promptly backed up to the dedicated folder.) But after that backup, subsequent attempts to open from that separate data folder give the same result as in a).

c) If I click on the QDF file in the backup folder, everything works happily. But if I try to start by the orthodox method of running QW.EXE, I again get the new user opening screen and no ability to open any of the files listed at the bottom of the "File" drop-down.

It was simply coming up with the "Cannot open file" message, as before. That is, I couldn't access any of the backed-up or copied QDF files from the new-user startup screen, which was as far as I could get because Quicken wouldn't recognise the QDF file sitting in its own folder.

Thus what has happened now is that instead of relying on the flash drive I now rely on the backup folder which contains the one and only QDF file that will start Quicken with all historical data intact.

That, of course, is a much safer situation, for which I thank the experts of this newsgroup; it was they who taught me that I could fix my Windows file associations so that clicking on a *.QDF file would launch Quicken.

Although I'm not completely out of the woods, that seemingly-small piece of advice has proved invaluable and my gratitude to the helpful experts in this ng is commensurate with that.

(Apologies for long-windeness, but it's not easy to be succinct and still get the detail across.)

JohnT

Hi, John.

You're working WAAAYY too hard! And confusing both Quicken and yourself (and me) in the process.

Now that you have Q2005 installed and working (except for accessing your data) on your new computer, and your data safely on your thumb drive, your path to the future should be very clear and easy.

As suggested by me and DP and Erich, FORGET all the manual transfers of data files that you have made! Just start Q2005. Click File | Restore from backup... and Browse to the data folder on your thumb drive. Click the QDF file and let Quicken load that; it will automatically carry along the related files that it needs. Once the file is loaded. explore it briefly to be sure that it seems to be complete. Then press +B (or click Backup or click File | Backup). For the Destination, Browse to your chosen location FOLDER (NOT the actual filename) and click OK. Then Exit Quicken.

You should now have 3 identical sets of your Quicken data files. The actual working copy, which will be kept up-to-the-minute with no action required on your part, is in C:\Program Files\QuickenW\QDATA.QDF (and related QDATA.* files). Another copy will be in the Destination you chose in Backup, above. And the third copy is still on your thumb drive.

A week after you install Quicken, it will automatically create (if it doesn't already exist) a new folder called C:\Program Files\QuickenW\BACKUP and store a copy of your fileset with the names QDATA1.*. The following week, it will rename QDATA1 to QDATA2 and store an updated copy of QDATA as QDATA1. After 5 weeks (unless you change the default number in Preferences), you will have 5 sets of backup files, dated a week apart, and named from QDATA5 (the oldest) to QDATA1 (the newest). After 6 weeks, QDATA5 will be deleted, the other sets' names will be incremented and the new set will be saved as QDATA1.

When we let Quicken handle our data file, it automatically includes the entire fileset. When we use any other tool, we must remember to handle ALL the files - and some of them have extensions that don't include Q - or at least, in some years they did. But when we try to round up the whole set, we might not recognize some of them, but Quicken will. Drag'n'drop is a great tool, but not for this job. And we don't need "Intuit-related files". We need only the files containing our unique DATA. All the rest of the files can be installed from the CD or downloaded as Updates or rebuilt on-the-fly by Quicken as it installs and runs.

Let us know what happens when you follow these steps.

(PS: There's NO need to email me a copy of your newsgroup posts. Netiquette frowns on email responses to newsgroup messages unless email is specifically invited or the subject veers from the topic of the newsgroup. I'm not sure how Forte handles this, but in Outlook Express or Windows Mail, we click Reply Group, not Reply All, which sends email in addition to the post.)

RC

"John Talbot" wrote>

I've now reached the stage where I have removed the flash drive,

I don't think I can be of much help, I'm not sure from what I have read what is causing the problem you are having.

But, I note this is the second time you mentioned this, and it can not be true. There is no such thing as an "update" or "upgrade" of Quicken in the sense you are using the term. Every new Quicken version is a stand alone version. No new version of Quicken requires the presence of any previous version of Quicken to install.

In your other post that mentioned this, you noted some message you got when trying to install, but did not quote the full exact message, nor say at what specific point you got that message.

There's no guarantee that knowing those details will conclusively pinpoint the problem, but I believe you can and should find a way to do a normal install, without trying to copy any files from any previous version or install.

When a user had install problems, we used to recommend a Windows uninstall, followed by a manual cleaning of the hard drive of every reference to Quicken; usually accomplished by deleting every folder, and every file, that had Quicken in its name. I have found that to be helpful even recently when I got a corrupted install. [And in more recent Quicken versions - I think Q2004 is one - you needed to look in the "Documents and Settings" folder under "All users" and any specific user's folders. (You also had to make sure that Windows Explorer was displaying "hidden" folders/files.)

There is now an Intuit utility to help in that process, "qleanui.exe", which comes on the CD with Quicken versions starting with Q2006, but which you should be able to download from Intuit's support web site. (Sometimes the utility does not seem to do a complete job, but I can't tell you what conditions that cause that.)

Following the uninstall and cleanup process, we used to recommend a reboot, then installing to a new folder. I still do that today when I think I have installation problems. It can't hurt to try.

And once the reinstallation is done, I think you should make sure you have updated Quicken to the latest release. The installation process may offer to do that for you, but if not, you can do it yourself by going to the Intuit web site and downloading the "manual updates" for your particular version.

I can now report on this topic that renaming the six *.Q** data files I have been shifting, copying, and backing up appears to have solved my problem!

There was a set of the files in the main Quicken folder and I simply changed the last letter of the name in each, started the program, invoked File|Open, navigated to the new *.QDF and - voila, success, cheers, hooray, bliss!

There is no accounting forome of the vagaries one may still encounter in this 'ere computing business.

I am enormously grateful to the several people in this newsgroup who helped me on the way to my new happiness; without their encouragement I would have thrown in the towel days ago. Thank you all mightily.

(One poster took me to task for saying that I couldn't install from my Quicken 2004 update CD to a "virgin" HDD. I think back at that time Intuit (or Reckon, as the Australian arm then was named) must have had a different policy out here from USA, because my disc definitely needs to see an earlier version, otherwise attempting to install from it gives the message "Quicken was unable to find a valid version on this system and will therefore now close". My CD will, however, install happily over a corrupt existing product.

I should also mention that I am fond of Quicken 2004 and find certain types of data entry simpler in it than in subsequent versions. I do, however, run Quicken 2006 on another PC. At income tax time, I then compare report totals and printouts from each version so as to be quite sure that no errors have snuck through.)

Congratulations. And thanks for reporting back. Lots of times in newsgroups and similar Internet forums, people report problems, recieve proposals for solutions, but never report back after they find one that works. I guess the bliss makes them forgetful. Good to hear that something suggested here really worked.