Hi, Phil.
Are these stocks on your Watch List? That's one way to get quotes for stocks that you don't own. It's especially good for watching stocks that you are thinking of buying, or for stocks that you have sold but want to continue watching. (Seller's Remorse?)
Another possibility is the oft-encountered problem of rounding of shares held. Quicken shows us share quantities to 3 decimal places (.001 share), but actually calculates to more precision (.000001) behind the scenes. So, you may have sold 100 shares but, because of past stock splits or stock dividends or mergers, Quicken thought you had 100.000001 shares - and that you still have that .000001 share left, so it continues to get quotes for it. If that is your situation, you can get rid of the fractional share by deleting and re-entering the historical transactions in that stock, being sure to record actual numbers of shares, rather than letting Quicken calculate them. For sales, use the option to Specify Lots and then let Quicken select enough shares to clean out your holdings. To avoid such problems in the future, always enter exact dollar amounts (to the penny) and exact numbers of shares involved (to the whole share or to .001 share for mutual funds), letting Quicken do any rounding to the per-share prices, which won't affect future holdings anyhow.
In Quicken 2006, under Enter Transactions, there is a line to Adjust Share Balance. I'm not sure if that was there in Q2004, and I've never tried it. But others here have used it and it might be just what you need.
If that's not the explanation in your case, please post back with examples.
RC