Quicken and Formating Hard Drive Help please!!

[Abyssa]

I need to format my hard drive, I have Quicken on my hard drive and I will be re-installing the same Windows XP that came with the computer. My question is, If I burn the entire quicken folder of the hard drive to a CD and re-copy it back to the hard drive after the format, will it work normaly?

[doctorgonzo]

Probably not. You will need to reinstall Quicken from the original CD to get it to work properly. The installation installs DLL files, registry values, and so on, and you won't get that stuff by just copying the Quicken directory.

[Abyssa]

Thanks for replying doctorgonzo.
Any idea which files out of Quicken folder I should burn not to lose my data?

[doctorgonzo]

The easiest thing to do is a backup from within Quicken itself. Depending on what version of Quicken you have, the backup option should be under the File menu. It will back up all the data and you can tell it where to save the files.

[edfair]

The versions I've run across put everything you need in one file, which is a duplicate of the file in the quicken directory.
But I've also found that there is other stuff like page layout and preferences that are not backed up so you probably would be better served by burning the entire quicken directory and a separate backup directory. You may not be able to duplicate the exact page layout without having the entire directory to suck individual files over.

[Abyssa]

Originally Posted by doctorgonzo The easiest thing to do is a backup from within Quicken itself. Depending on what version of Quicken you have, the backup option should be under the File menu. It will back up all the data and you can tell it where to save the files.

I am using ver 2002 and it wont let me back up to CD directly from Quicken back up option. I checked the help folder it says I have to set up my CD burner to appear as a hard drive, how the heck do I do that? Why so damn complicated? Their web page has no information about how to do it either.
I backed up to the back up folder on the hard drive then copied that to the CD but Quicken is refusing to restore from it.
Any ideas what I can do to back up to the CD?

[doctorgonzo]

I simply back up to the hard drive then burn to CD. I have no idea why that's not working for you.

In order to backup directly to CD, you need to install some kind of packet-writing software. It usually comes with your CD burning software; do you have Roxio or Nero?

[Abyssa]

Do you back up to the backup folder within Quicken? I did that and burned that folder but when I go to restore from the folder it is showing like 15 files and I tried each one of those files on the CD and it keeps giving me the error that it didnt restore.
I am starting to hate this software.

[doctorgonzo]

No, I backup to my separate backup partition. Try backing up to an empty folder; I'm not sure how many files Quicken 2002 creates for backup, but at least you will be able to see them.

[bozo]

I can't say for sure with Quicken, but I have it's brother, "Quickbooks", and I would think their file system would be the same.

In Quickbooks, the "[company name].QBW", is the file where ALL company data is stored, including settings. This is the only file I need to backup. If I have a new install of QB...I simply copy this file from a stored location, & paste it into the QB folder. FYI: there is also a file in the QB folder named [company name].QBB...this is NOT the file I want to backup, this is the "Backup" file.

If you need to identify which is the "data file" in Quicken (it should have some sort of identifier like you name)...you can start guessing which file it is, then one by one (be sure Quicken is closed), CUT the target file, & paste to the desktop...then open Quicken to see if you data is still there...if is there, then you have the wrong file. Follow this elimination process until you find the right data file (if you data is NOT there when you open Quicken...you got the right file). Test it by Cutting the file from the desktop back to the Quicken folder, and everything should be back to normal.

Once you know which file your data is in, you can do away (I did) with their backup utility, and merely "copy & paste" the data file to another location, or burn it to CD, or both!

This may sound scarry...but I have done this MANY times (cutting & pasting the ".QBW" file).

[glc]

Do a backup to a folder, then burn the folder. In order to restore from the backup, you have to copy the folder to the hard drive, then remove the read-only attributes. Then you can restore from the folder.

Quicken differs from Quickbooks - Quickbooks keeps all company info in a single QBW file. Quicken uses several different files for your data. The backup will probably consist of QTX, QSD, QPH, QEL and QDF files.