A client called saying they had been on a tech support call with QuickBooks for five hours trying to get their Desktop back up and running. Everything the tech did seemed to make things worse.
Sometimes that just happens. What you do can turn a bad experience into a good one if you take the right steps—in the right order.
Not only did there seem to be a file problem, but more importantly, none of the QuickBooks Applications would even load on any one of their five computers by the time I was brought into the picture.
My first thought was, "We have to get QuickBooks running before we can ever get the issue of the file resolved."
Here are the steps I took:
First, repairing the QuickBooks Application.
- Open the Windows Services app is done by typing Services into the Windows search box.
- When the list of Services opens, you will want to Stop every QB (Desktop)- related one. Odds are if it starts with QB, it is QuickBooks related. Be sure to save before closing so everything you stopped remains that way until your next reboot.
- Next, you will use the Windows Program Repair utility found under the Programs and Features menu item of the Windows Control Panel.
- Once you find it in the list of Programs the QuickBooks Version you need to repair, select it, then choose the Uninstall/Change option appearing at the top of the window.
- When the QuickBooks Desktop Installation – Maintenance Wizard gives you the option to select Remove or Repair, be certain to select Repair.
- Allow the Repair wizard to do its work. This may take some time to determine what needs to be fixed, and then update the broken parts.
- Once it is done, don’t assume QuickBooks is operable. We need to reboot the computer before we can even take the next steps.
- After the computer has rebooted, we need to download and launch the QuickBooks Tool Hub, of course, QuickBooks gives you an easy menu item to access it. But that doesn’t do you any good if QuickBooks is broken. HERE is a link to find it.
- You can download the Tool Hub from the second paragraph of Step 1 of the above URL article. Hopefully, Intuit won’t change the URL of this valuable document anytime soon.
- Proceed with downloading and then installing the Tool Hub. After installation, you are ready to use the Program Problems section of the hub.
- First, use the (1) Quick Fix my Program that says will take ~ one minute to complete. I rarely see it take that short a time, more like two or three minutes to finish. You will see a green screen flash on with a lot of jargon. Just ignore all of what you see and let the tool finish until you get the Thank You for using Tool Hub message.
- Once again, don’t assume you are ready to start using QuickBooks; you’re not. My experience says the Quick Fix may fix some things wrong with QB, but never all of them, even with having done a repair via Windows.
- That's why I always move immediately on to (2) “QuickBooks Program Diagnostic Tool that is going to fix a whole variety of QuickBooks issues related to the various third-party components from Microsoft that QuickBooks relies on to work. As with the Quick Fix just ignore the jargon on the blue screens and let the tool do its thing.
- After you have run the two Fix My Program tools in the Tool Hub, you are ready for the next step which is another reboot of your computer. Never, never, never try to open and use QuickBooks after taking these steps without first having actually updating everything and bringing up all the related services required via a reboot of your computer.
- When you are back up and running from a Windows standpoint, we are ready to attempt to launch QuickBooks. Don’t use any existing icons on the desktop. Go to the Windows menu from the Windows Start icon and scroll until you find the version of QuickBooks you need to start.
- Chances are, with everything you have done, QuickBooks will probably take longer than ever to open and, when it does, it will probably display either the first time start of a Company walk through. Or, it will display the No Company Open window with no companies listed (you should be so lucky).
- If you get this far without an error, or QuickBooks simply closing on you, chances are your broken QB installation is fixed. But don’t go jumping off the high-diving board and try to open your Company file. You have one thing to check on before doing anything file related.
- We want to check this installation of QuickBooks, even if this is going to be the QuickBooks Server, to make certain that Hosting is turned off for our initial testing.
- From the window shown above, we will select File on the gray menu bar, then select Utilities, and then look to make certain Hosting is off, we know it is turned off if the Menu item reads, “Host Multi-User Access.” If the menu item reads Stop Hosting Multi-User Access, then hosting is turned on, and you need to turn it off by selecting the Stop Hosting option.
- If you must change the hosting option QuickBooks will display a Communicating with Hosting process… before announcing the change you requested.
- You now are ready to test QuickBooks with a sample file by selecting the option to Open a Sample file. Allow it to download to the same file location (if you are asked) as your normal Company file location. Yes, I know, I just had you set-up a sample file in the Company File directory.
- Follow the steps to open the sample file displayed on screen. The file should open in Single User Mode and should not require a Username or Password.
- Assuming the sample file opens in Single User Mode, we are ready to check for Multi User operations.
- Close all open windows in QB, and then select the File menu again, followed by the Utilities menu.
- Now select Host Multi-User Access… to start the hosting process.
- Select yes or continue to the related messages, Do you want to host multi-user access?, QuickBooks must close the company file and reopen it to change to multi-user mode and This action requires Windows administrator permissions.
- Even though you have started hosting the file is still in Single User Mode when it reopens.
- From the File menu select Switch to Multi-user Mode.
- The Sample file should close and reopen in Multi-user Mode (note the file name at the top of the screen now shows multi-user near the end of the QuickBooks version description).
- You should now close this workstation and repeat each of these steps on the next computer having the same broken QuickBooks installation issues.
In Part 2 of this article, I will look at the steps to repair your broken Company file and make sure your QuickBooks Database Server is configured properly.
Disclosures:
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