Quickbooks Registration File Windows 7

1. Qbregistration.dat Location
2. Quickbooks Error 3371

Has anyone had a problem trying to install QuickBooks Pro 2012. I get the following error: ' Error: QuickBooks has a problem in reading this registration file: qbregistration'. Have tried from the disc as well as Intuit on-line installer. It verifiesthe license number but, gives me that error when I try and install. Quickbooks support says that it isn't in the software but, won't tell me what to do as they want me to buy a service agreement from them an allow them to access my computer to correct theinstall.Thanks.

Just what we need, another version of Microsoft Windows to confuse our clients (and staff, and ourselves). In anticipation of the upcoming release I thought I would take a look at QuickBooks and Windows 10 to see if I would have to face any major compatibility problems when the new operating system is available. Compared to prior releases of Windows I would say that I’m pleased with what I see so far, but I wouldn’t recommend that you be an early adopter.Note that I’m doing this with a preview version of Windows 10, as the final release isn’t available yet, so you could see different results later on. You WillHave to Deal with Windows 10 SoonIt is easy enough to say, “ I’ll wait until Windows 10 has been out a few months before I’ll bother with it.” That is a good idea – I don’t recommend that you be an “early adopter” of any new Microsoft release. The problem is, if you are an accounting professional you know that as soon as it is available you will have clients come to you who are using it, in spite of your recommendations. Heck, I’m already being approached by people who are using it on their business systems, even though Microsoft themselves say that you shouldn’t use the preview versions in a production environment.And, this time around, Microsoft is making it really easy to get Windows 10 when it comes out. Take a look at what I’m seeing on my production system, which runs Windows 7, down in the lower right on the system tray.

See the “Get Windows 10” icon? Microsoft is already starting to push information on Windows 10 out to users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.Click on that icon and you get a “free upgrade” offer.I know that people are going to want to click on it. “Free upgrade” is a powerful draw. What this will do is register this computer system with Microsoft, and they will start pushing out the Windows 10 system files to your computer in the near future. Once the files are all there, you’ll see another icon that will let you easily (hopefully) upgrade to Windows 10. I know I have clients who just won’t be able to resist clicking on that icon, just like they can’t resist installing the latest update to QuickBooks even though I ask them to wait.According to information posted in the by Microsoft, Windows 10 will be available on July 29.

Anyone who has a “genuine” version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 can get it – unless you are a corporate user with the Enterprise editions of Windows. Also note that the retail packaged versions (not upgrades) won’t be available until some later date.How did that update icon get on my system?

Why do some systems show it and not others? This feature was delivered via the Windows Update mechanism as KB, a somewhat stealthy update whose title was “Update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1”.

No mention of Windows 10 there. TrickySome people are seeing that the reservation process itself isn’t always working smoothly. It involves a script that checks to see if your system is compatible, and it can take as long as 30 minutes to complete, or longer.

Microsoft warns that the process could get stuck in an infinite loop. There doesn’t seem to be any advantage to “reserving” your upgrade – you have a full year to take advantage of the free upgrade offer.

See the page for details.A couple of technical notes on the upgrade:. If you are running Windows 8, and haven’t upgraded to Windows 8.1 yet, you will need to do the 8.1 upgrade first before you can install Windows 10. The “reservation” program does a check of your computer to see if it is compatible.

Qbregistration.dat Location

See the for details on what is needed. The Windows 10 upgrade process will uninstall your anti-virus and anti-malware applications, and after the upgrade it is supposed to reinstall the latest version and restore your settings for that app. I have a lot of questions about this, so it is important that you check on this after the upgrade. There isn’t (at this moment) a definitive list of which apps are covered.

Note that the reinstall will only occur if Microsoft determines that your subscription for that app is current. If it is not current then Windows Defender will be enabled instead. I have a lot of concerns over this aspect of the upgrade. Windows Media Center is discontinued, so if you relied on this you will have to find a substitute. There are a lot of concerns about Windows Update and how it will work with Windows 10. The specifications from Microsoft (at this time) on this are vague. Windows 10 Home users may not be able to control updates other than delaying when their system reboots – it doesn’t look like you will be able to “hide” any updates if you want to prevent them from installing.

Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise users may be able to “delay” installation of nonsecurity fixes. Another change is that patches can be deployed at any time, rather than waiting for a specific day of the week (“Patch Tuesday”).Testing QuickBooks and Windows 10As I mentioned, I’m using an early evaluation copy of Windows 10 (build 10074, downloaded on June 8, 2015).

Any issues that I run into might be resolved by the release date. That also means that new issues can crop up.I’m looking at QuickBooks versions from 2012 through 2015 – I didn’t take time to work with any older versions that aren’t supported by Intuit. I know that the 2012 product has been, but it was there so I gave it a try.

I used a 64 bit Sony laptop running Windows 7, and it already had my target versions of QuickBooks installed. Charlie Russell has been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70's, and remembers releasing his first commercial accounting software product when you had an 8-bit microcomputer with one 8 inch floppy disk drive.

He has a special interest in inventory and manufacturing software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor with additional certifications for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise, as well as being a Xero Certified Partner. Charlie started blogging about QuickBooks in 2008 and has been writing for the Accountex Report (formerly the Sleeter Report) since 2011.

He retired from accounting and QuickBooks activities in early 2018.Visit his web site for information about his QuickBooks add-on products. He is also the author of the blog. This article applies well to the micro business, without a server. For SMB: In attempting to test Windows 10 on Windows Server 2012 Essentials (rapidly gaining prominence as Server 2003 dies in a few weeks), the IT community is completely frustrated. In upgrading to Windows 10, the connection to the server is removed. And so far, there is no way to connect the latest evaluation product.

Thus no testing can be done. The unspoken message from Microsoft is don’t even think about upgrading to 10 in the SMB environment for a long time. Looking at your email address, are you working with the Australian version? If so, keep in mind that the Australian version is managed by Reckon, not by Intuit, so that can complicate things. And I only address the US versions here.

I have no access to Reckon versions.If you had an existing installation on a system, and then upgraded to Windows 10 and ran into problems, one solution often is to do a “clean uninstall” of QuickBooks and then reinstall it in the new operating environment. That often resolves issues. But, without knowing what kind of “trouble with invoicing” you had, or what method of emailing you are using, there isn’t much that I can say in detail. The answer is simple. Intuit wants you to buy Quickbooks 2016 – they are a billion dollar company. I have no doubt, if they were wiling, they’d fix all Windows 10 issues for older versions of Quickbooks as well. But then, why would they do so?

It would affect their bottom line, and their Quickbooks 2016 sales!Compatibility with Windows 10 is not a huge massive undertaking. I am sure Microsoft has outlined what changes need to be made to various programs that ran under Windows 7.Intuit wants you to believe that it is hard and/or impossible to do so without upgrading!

One of the reasons why I won’t upgrade to Windows 10 yet. Upgrade from Win 8.1 to 10 with QB non-Enterprise and Single User looks workable with only a few headaches, and worthwhile eventually. Going from Win 7, especially with Multi User, and guaranteed with Server 2012 as fileserver is asking for a nightmare. Best insurance: Uninstall update KB3035583, do search for updates, then right click on re-found KB3035583 and Hide. You have a year to get it free, and that is arguably enough time for Microsoft to get it right. Not sure if it is enough time for Intiut to get it right, considering that Enterprise support admits they haven’t got 2015 right for multi-user larger installations yet.

Yes, and Charlie is right here. Thanks Charlie for not trending in unknown territory, Linux and Unix. We have clients running in both, esp. With Apple.You can stabilize QB Enterprise in these environments, Unix and Linux.But because the QB Enterprise releases still have bugs for Accounting and Financial operations, our clients are considering a move anyway.And Intuit has not shown a solid commitment to QB Enterprise legacy on the desktop or for hosting and networking, etal.Intuit claims it will have an Enterprise QBO within two years Who knows That could be Marketing and Sales reps. Answers, too, to questions posed by concerned ProAdvisors, Consultants and Developers.We are sharing our results with clients only, until something pops at Intuit plus Microsoft or our clients select a more solid business legacy. Agreed Charlie We shuddered at that statement, too. I thought that I might get a rise out of you.

Quickbooks Error 3371

I shook my head when I heard, like I had bees in my ears. And it’s not official, agreedIt was at a Q&A after a QB Local event. We took the statement as either a misunderstanding of the question asked by a Pro Advisor or inexperience of the Sales Rep. On the products she was promoting and presenting.Intuit has allowed lots of folks, such as top Pro Advisors, including Sales rep.s to make statements in defense of QBO, which Intuit should vet first.

Intuit needs to start reviewing and evaluating its image and destiny.Maybe that is what’s happening this week with the realignment and layoffs. Again, who knows what is really happeningIntuit has choices. We hope they work on the good products while developing the new. They can do both. Both with quality.

Charlie, Thank you for your article and you advise, wish I had of waited to upgrade but so far I think headaches might only be minor. I am using 2013 and have waited to upgrade to QuickBooks 2015 because of a feature we use in our Catering business, and that is the ability to email invoices to customers and let them pay directly into the Intuit Payment Network.

This feature doesn’t work in Quickbooks 2015. Any suggestions?

I am having issues with 2013 after being open and usable for a while just not responding and then shutting down and cannot reopen file even after using QuickBooks file doctor. I can’t really offer any help with your 2013 installation on Windows 10 without having the actual system in my possession, unfortunately.

At this point I’ve not seen a specific mention of any issues there.QuickBooks 2015 has the “QuickBooks Payments” feature that replaces Intuit PaymentNetwork, allowing you to email invoices to customers and have them pay directly into your account. There are differences between the old and the new system, but if you are used to IPN then you should find the new system comparable. See my article on this at. I use this in my own business in place of IPN. Hi,This page is a great resource. Much more useful than anything Intuit have to offer.So three days of upgrading, downgrading and various states in between, moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10!I uninstalled Kaspersky as it was apparently stopping the upgrade going smoothly. Now I can’t reinstall it as there is no Kaspersky version which is yet compatible with Windows 10.

Great start!More relevantly, Quickbooks 2013 appears to work normally for me until it either:a) crashes unexpectedlyb) freezes and has to be killedFor me, PDF printing is working fine. As long as I’m quick enough I can actually generate and PDF print invoices to email to customers.The Microsoft “Troubleshoot compatibility” program which is selectable when you right click on the QBW32Pro executable, has declared that QB Pro 2013 is not compatible with Windows 10. Trying to set compatibility to Win 7 or Win 8 just makes Quickbooks not launch at all for me.Bit of a messThanks,Simon. Your blog is so helpfuljust found it today.

I “blindly” updated to Win10 based on Bing searches that said all was well with Win10 and QuickBooks Pro 2014. Now I cannot get into QB; I get repeated “needs administrator permission” messages. I am running a single user install of QB, and even if I go and select “run as administrator” nothing gets any better. I am foolishly a week or so away from closing out the fiscal year and now cannot access QB to get on with it. Cannot seem to get around this issue; maybe uninstall and install?. In general, to “sync” implies that you have a desktop version of QB, and there is some utility program that is “synchronizing” the data there with another program – usually this means it is being moved up to some Cloud server where the information is accessed by another program, but it could be something local as well.When you install QuickBooks currently, it installs a program called Intuit Sync Manager, and that moves your data to the Intuit cloud.

From there, your data can be accessed by any app that you subscribe to that is found in the Intuit app center.Some applications don’t use Intuit Sync Manager. Bill.com, Method CRM, Tally are some examples, they have their own sync engine that they use to exchange your desktop data with their apps. QQube is a local product, not cloud based, and they have a sync engine that moves your data into their separate reporting tool. There are several others that are similar.So when you say “sync error”, probably your upgrade has interfered with one of these. Without knowing the details of the error, I can’t say which of these is involved. Each one is going to have its own separate kind of “sync error” message.Odds are that this is Intuit Sync Manager, but not necessarily.

If you are using an app that syncs, then that app won’t work until sync is restored. If you don’t use any apps, then you may just find it easier to turn the sync off (you don’t need it if you don’t need yoru data in some other app). I can’t really tell you what the impact is on your situation, as I don’t know what apps, if any, you might be using. It is something that you should look at with someone who can look at your system for you.I don’t want to tell you to just turn off Intuit Sync Manager, because you may be using it for some app. Thanks for this really useful article Charlie. It was reassuring to see you had exactly the same issue as me with QB 2012 Pro with PDFs. I couldn’t email/save as pdf an invoice under Windows 10 (no previous problems with Windows 7).

Oddly, could only print using the File-Print Invoice route (then scan and email outside of QB!) – none of the other print functions worked.Cross I have to bear continuing with QB 2012 I guess. I’ll upgrade sometime no doubt. Shame because otherwise I’ve found Windows10 pretty good thus far (much quicker on starting and shutting down). If there is one thing I could add, the “Get Windows 10” pop-up on my Windows 7 machine.continues. to report that I have NO compatibility issues with any software on my machine, even though I continue to use QuickBooks 2012 pro regularly.

Indeed, if you go to the “compatibility center” QB2012 is shown as compatible (a green checkbox) for Windows 10, 8.1 and 8. It’s only if you click on the specific product details and read the comments will you learn otherwise.This problem (PDF creation in QB2012) started with Windows 8. You had a very good article about it here. Perhaps it will help folks with Windows 10 as well?

I’ll stick with 7 for now. Thank you, Andrew and Joe.Joe, you point out the article that I should have referred to – but I haven’t actually tested the fixes there on my WIndows 10 system, since I generally don’t work with “retired” versions of QuickBooks. I’m guessing that the article may provide some resolution for people (but I can’t say for sure).I don’t know how Microsoft decided what to put on that list – I’m going to guess that they did some very, very superficial testing. QB 2012 runs on Win 10, but you have to get into certain functions that don’t work.Andrew, when you say “none of the other print functions worked”, are you referring to just printing to a printer, not saving as a PDF?. Kim, I feel your pain. But while I suspect the issue is a firewall setting or something else with networking on your Windows 10 machine, QB2012 is not supported on Windows 10 by Intuit themselves.

(indeed, it isn’t supported at all since it’s retired) If you have no plans to upgrade QuickBooks, your only real solution is to go back to Windows 7.Please note you only have 30 days from the day you upgraded to uninstall Windows 10.If you are going to upgrade QuickBooks, given Intuit’s super-strict sunset policy you might want to wait until 2016 is released in a month or two assuming you can hold out that long. I definitely wouldn’t say that the only solution is to go back. You would still have an unsupported version of QuickBooks.Most likely there is a user permission issue – a firewall issue is possible but less likely. However it is hard to say without hands on the file.

There are a lot of things that can be looked at before rolling back the version of Windows.And, although I understand your reasons for suggesting holding out to the 2016 release of QuickBooks, note that I rarely recommend that people upgrade to a new year of the desktop product until months after the initial release. Generally not until the February (or thereabouts) timeframe, usually. Initial releases of a new year of QB typically have a number of problems to work out. I run Quickbooks POS 2013 on my Cash Register PC.

I run Quickbooks 2014 on my Back Office PC. After upgrading the two PC’s they won’t sync via RDS Server anymore. I can’t get it to lync back up at all. What are my options here?

I’ve tried and tried to get it to work and I finally gave up and decided to roll back the pc’s to windows 7. Well the Register rolled back fine. But the back office computer won’t roll back. When it restarts the pc to start the rollback it gets past the initial bios startup screens and then it pauses for about 15 seconds and then restarts the system and it just reboots back into windows 10. It won’t roll back. So now I’m stuck in a spot.

I’m either going to have to re-format that pc and put Windows 7 back on it and then re-load my backup file. Or if their is a way to sync up Quickbooks POS and Quickbooks without doing the RDS server BS then I will try that. Any help is really appreciated. Thank you for your excellent article. Last week I bought a new computer and made the leap to Windows 10. Intuit’s site suggests that I should upgrade from Quickbooks Pro 2013 to 2015 to work with Windows 10. I decided to save the $200 for now and stick with my current version, based on your article.

I’ve now installed Quickbooks pro 2013 on the new computer and tested a few things and so far, so good. I’m a small business owner, doing my own books. Thinking I’ll keep the old Windows 7 computer, iin case I encounter problems down the road.

Charlie,To add to your admonishment that IE is an integral part of QB, here is how to open IE in Win 10 and make it the default web browser:1. Launch Edge (the new default browser)2. Choose (more) Select ‘Open with Internet Explorer’3. While IE is now running, right-click on IE icon on Taskbar select ‘Pin to taskbar’You can now close Edge and IE4. Go to Start Control Panel Settings System Default Apps Web Browser5.

Scroll down and click inside the Web Browser box (there is no dropdown $#!^) and choose Internet Explorer from the fly open list—————————————————————-I have referred this site as the most independent authority on QB as we ride into Windows 10. I am personally running QB Premier Accounting 2010 in 10 without any major issues sans sunset features, but I have workarounds. I am essentially retired and have a very limited client base.Your articles are outstanding, but where does a user go when the dealer says you have to buy a brand new set of tires for your car after they decide to change the size of the wheel base? So you go out and get new tires only to find that they only ride on certain roads. How do we let THEM get away with this nonsense!Fred KagelFreehold Computer Training. Several of my users have upgraded to Windows 10.

These are using both QuickBooks Pro 2013 and QuickBooks Pro 2014. Quickbooks itself seems to work fine, however the cases where they want to use it in Multi-User mode are not working.Specifically: ONE user can use QuickBooks from EITHER the machine hosting the files OR from another computer on the LAN. This works fine. However, when a second user tries to access the same file one of two situations occurs: 1) When the second access is attempted from another computer on the LAN, an error message suggesting firewall issues appears.

2) When the second access is attempted from the computer hosting the file, QuickBooks fails to open and appears to hang indefinitely. The firewall warning isn’t really relevant since the computer on the LAN can open the file as long as it is the first system to access it.The same exact behaviors are experienced for BOTH QuickBooks Pro 2013 and QuickBooks Pro 2014.In all cases, the data files in question are absolutely in “Multi-User” mode.

Turning Multi-User off and then back produced the same results. If you just purchased QB 2015, if you bought it from Intuit then when QB 2016 is out you may be able to get a free upgrade. Not certain on that, as there are some variables involved.

HOWEVER, in general, I don’t recommend that you use QB 2016 for at least several months after it comes out. I usually tell people to wait until at least January of the following year. You can get the upgrade from Intuit (if they let you) but hold on to it.

Run QB 2015.If you just purchased a laptop then odds are that you won’t have too much trouble with Win10, as newer systems are more compatible. BUT I would still suggest waiting awhile while they work out the kinks. Lots of people are having issues. Check with your laptop manufacturer (my laptop has a driver incompatibility and I’m being told I should have waited).I’m successfully running QB 2015 on Win10. Intuit’s statement (as I mention above) says that they don’t know of any issue with it. You folks might want to have a look at this discussion over on LinkedIn.

I have had some bad lockups while using QB 2015 (Accountant) on Windows 10 that resulted in unrecoverable errors in a company file. My ‘working hypothesis’ is that they were the result of QB 2015 trying to open hyperlinks in some Preferences setting that were ‘hard wired’ to Internet Explorer (though it is also possible that QB Sync was involved). It was Kathy Dienhart mentioning this site over there that brought me here for the first time yesterday. Here’s the link:. William, on my test system, I have no problems with the Internet Explorer issues that you brought up in LinkedIn. You mentioned a specific case that I hadn’t tested in my article, but going back to that system (which is now on a “public” release of Windows 10, not the pre-release), I don’t have any problems of that sort that you mention. None at all.Yes, QuickBooks is hard wired to use Internet Explorer, just as it is hard wired to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Adobe Acrobat.

It has been that way a long time.“QB Sync”, I assume you are referring to Intuit Sync Manager. I actually haven’t tested that, since I don’t sync QB Desktop files to anything in the cloud.

Intuit Sync Manager is going away, since Intuit has announced that support for that stops early next year. I don’t have an app that needs it at this time, on this system.

I doubt that it is an issue, but I haven’t tested.The questions for you are (1) is this a new Windows 10 system, or did you upgrade from an older version? (2) Can you run Internet Explorer by itself without problems?.

We have upgraded to Windows 10 and QB Pro 2015. We cannot generate PDF’s for invoices or estimates using the print, save as PDF commands.It says “Sorry! We couldn’t save your form as a PDF file.” The online PDF print and repair tool is of no value –We can make a PDF if we email either the estimate or invoice. It will drop it in as an attachment (Outlook 2013).

We don’t like the name automatically assigned by QB, the default message or the egregious built in advertising in the default emails. So we double click the attachment and save as and rename the document.

When you close the email draft generated by QB, be sure to uncheck the email later box otherwise you wont be able to mark the invoice as pending.This is a big hassle. There might be a way to change the default email message or the name of the document- but I haven’t found it. We have sent this information to QB but no response yet.We also tried to generate the inovices and estimates by using Print, XPS document (comes with Windows 10) but the documents cannot be opened by XPS – so this doesn’t work either.Ron. Ron, can you save a report (not an invoice or estimate) to PDF? Try some report that you have never printed or saved in any fashion, if there is one. This is a quick test of something. Let me know what happens, depending on your answer there are several ways to go.As far as the name of the attachment, there is no way to change this.As a workaround, you can install one of several PDF printer drivers (don’t print directly using the ones installed by QuickBooks).

But I have not tested ANY of those for Windows 10 compatibility, so there is a risk there. I have Dropbox on my system and I can update easily. Of course, you could always try uninstalling it for a short time, to see if your updates can install.There are several issues that can interfere with updates, resolving them depends on what exactly you are seeing for an error. Most involve cleaning out some stuff that gets left behind from a prior install. Some are trickier – you can sometimes get some corrupted values in your Windows Registry.

Harder to get around that.The full installers are available on the Intuit support site – so you can uninstall QB and then reinstall with the latest full version. Pete, that is the Intuit KBF article that I referred to in my article, in the “update” on 7/29 under the heading “Will Intuit Officially Support WIndows 10”.If I were in charge of things at Intuit I would be saying something similar. Note that they say only 2015 (and one assumes 2016) are supported, not 2014 as you state.It makes sense from their standpoint.

They want people to be running the latest version of QuickBooks. They don’t want to claim support for a version of QuickBooks that was created before Windows 10 was available for testing. There are little nagging issues – why not limit what versions you support? And it doesn’t bother me that they won’t support a version that is older than the operating system, really.As far as as patches, they should work, but often we find that there are funky little issues with getting a patch to install, particularly when you upgrade the operating system. There are ways to resolve that, but it would depend on what exact error you are getting. The official word is that they did preliminary testing with the preliminary versions of Windows 10, but that they wanted to wait until the final “official” version is out to do the final testing.

And I sympathize with them – Microsoft makes changes to the product right up to the final day, so things that might (or might not) work in a release candidate could work differently in the final release. Microsoft doesn’t make it easy.Then again, it could be that Intuit wants to “encourage” people to move up to the most current version of their desktop product? Hard to say, at the time I’m writing this they haven’t released information on system requirements for QuickBooks 2016. I don’t expect them to do that until the product is available to the general public, around September 21 (I couldn’t get them to comment about Windows 10 compatibility in advance). Suzie, you didn’t mention which version of Quickbooks you are using. But on my Windows 10 Home 64-bit system with QB Pro 2012, the calendar view in the check register looks like it did before on Windows 7.Something you can try is to force Windows 10 to run a software program with Windows 7 settings.

Try this: Right click on your Quickbooks program icon on the desktop and choose “Properties”, then click the “Compatibility” tab and click the box that says “Run this program in compatibility mode for: ” the default should be “Windows 7”. Then open Quickbooks like normal and see if it helps or not.I have run QB 2012 with and without compatibility mode and so far both ways seem to work. I am keeping it in compatibility mode for now to play it safe since I have no intention to upgrade QB in the near future. I understand that this blog is primarily geared for QuickBooks and non-technical users. However some may find the following useful:Except for maybe Charlie, and not counting those who have adopted a wait-and-see, it seems like everyone here has done a Windows 10 ‘Upgrade’ in place. I am strongly recommending QuickBooks and non-QuickBooks users alike do a ‘Clean Install’ and doing so as a dual boot on the same Win 7/8/8.1 machine.

Assuming you have access to all of your licenses, user names and passwords of your software, a clean install removes excess garbage that may interfere with your system and interfere with your specific programs and hardware. Incidentally, a new store bought computer is NOT a clean install and there are methods to revert it back to an unadulterated state.To do a clean install requires more than just basic knowledge of computers, or access to an IT-minded person.My general overview:1. On your existing machine, click on Get Windows 10 and observe if your machine is deemed Windows 10 Compatible2. If so, make a full image backup3. Make room for a Windows 10 partition by using Computer/Disk Management to Shrink Volume. You should allow a minimum of 30-40 GB, but your needs may vary.4. Use Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool (MCT) to create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive from an ISO file.

With MCT, you get to choose what is appropriate for your machine: Home 32-bit/64-bit and same for Win 10 Pro versions5. During the install procedure, you will do a ‘Custom Install’ and choose the partition created in step #3 above6.

During the install you will skip entering in any product key ‘twice’: once says ‘Skip’ and the other says ‘Do this later’The prep of creating the ISO file, burning a DVD or making a bootable flash drive will take up most of your time, but the actual clean installation will take about a half hour. Then Windows 10 will update itself. You may need a weekend when your computer will not be in use as this update is a massive one. I wish they had an ISO with it already updated, but MS hasn’t provided one.If you do a dual boot on the same machine, Windows 10 will activate automatically, since activation is hardware based (BIOS/UEFI), and you just installed a new operating system on the same machine. Just give it some time; it doesn’t always happen right away or even after a couple of days. Nothing will deactivate, even after 30 days and AFAIK will not stop functioning until next July 29, 2016.7.

Test your printer(s). Update printer drivers if necessary. As a rule of thumb, go to your printer’s manufacturer site to download its full printing package as opposed to the built-in drivers of Win 10.

In some cases, you will not have any choice but to go with the built-in drivers as printer makers are as lazy as Intuit in updating their software.8. Even before activation, for QB users, I would recommend making Internet Explorer your default Web browser. To do this, follow my steps of my earlier post on this blog:9. Install QuickBooks. Multiusers need to really dedicate a single computer as a ‘host’ even if not a real server.

Work out shares, permissions, passwords, etc.10. In your original system, back up your company file from within QuickBooks. This is only way QB self validates the company file. An image backup does NOT.Test. Go slowly as Charlie has done.With a dual boot, you can access all of the data files on the other partition.

Going a step further, with a remote desktop program such as TeamViewer (commercial users are charged) you can actually run programs in the other partition, so you have the best of both worlds.I am confident that all will shake out as the marketplace will really determine QB’s ride in Windows 10. Then believe me, the technical issues will rapidly disappear. I am a strong advocate of moving to 10, but I must point out that I was fortunate to skip over the 8/8.1 debacle.

I really like what I’ve seen so far in 10’s organization, tightness of execution, and overall speed. I also believe that if members of the Sleeter Group, the QuickBooks community, and social media become more vocal with Intuit, QuickBooks will get the message.Fred KagelFreehold Computer Training. Thank you, Fred. This article was written prior to the official release of Windows 10, and the subsequent release of QuickBooks 2016. As time goes forward, we learn more.

Most of the problems with more current versions of QuickBooks on Windows 10 do seem to revolve around upgraded systems rather than clean installs. Unfortunately, a clean install isn’t always practical for most users. I recommend that they work with someone who is familiar with these issues rather than trying it on their own, in most cases.And we’ll have to see how things play out with the recent major update to Windows 10 that just came out, which I haven’t had a chance to play with yet.I’m not going to blame Intuit for most of the issues. Windows 10 has caused problems for a lot of the software products that I have been using in some situations.

Jumping in the conversation a year after the article, and I just want to say THANK YOU for your write-up! You cleared up a lot of my questions with Windows 10 on the near horizon for my firm.I’m a huge advocate for Windows 10, as just about everything runs and acts SO much better than previous operating systems. Not to mention that this will supposedly be the last major upgrade from Windows. New versions of Win 10 and beyond will not require an OS installation/re-installation, rather, new features/subsystems will come rapidly via Windows Update. Hopefully that will give us a break on software compatibility moving into the future, with the ability to keep the appropriate API’s in place, and still be able to add new subsystems as the OS evolves.Naturally I was a little irritated when I read that Intuit was limiting their QuickBooks support on Win 10 to 2015 and later, but after reading your write-up, and reading through the comments, I’m confident the upgrade should be pretty smooth even with our older versions of QuickBooks.

Thank you again, Charlie, so much for your research/testing. It’s truly invaluable!. Thank you for this article! The firm I work for is sticking with Windows 7 for the time being as we have so many applications not compatible with Windows 10, including many years of QuickBooks. Today I went to a client who is on QB 2007 to import the Accountant’s Changes to her books from last year (she never imported) and get the most recent Accountant’s Copy with current activity. However, when I tried to import I was given an error saying the file didn’t match. Since she sent over her last Acct.

Copy, she has upgraded her computer to Windows 10. Could this be the problem? And more importantly, what are you hearing from accountants whose clients upgrade to Windows 10? Are they having any trouble with importing accountant’s changes, or other compatibility issues?Thank you for your help!.

The matching issue wouldn’t be likely to be caused by Windows 10. You said the client is on QB 2007, but you didn’t say what year of QB you were using yourself.For the most part, the complaints I hear about Windows 10 tend to be how it runs differently, people who have hardware incompatibilities if they upgrade an older computer, things along that line. The primary issues with QB will be relating to PDF drivers and such. But I didn’t try older versions of QB with it – I use VMWare virtual machines to handle older versions of QB. Thank you, Charlie. I was using our Acct copy of QB 2007 as well – we keep several years as some clients refuse to upgrade, and sometimes you have to meet the person where they are. I posted a similar question at Intuit and was told by a couple of their instructors that changing the operating system would certainly have an effect on the program.

They emphasized several times that Intuit only supports QB2016 in the Win 10 environment, and told me that the focus should be on getting the client to QB2016. That’s great in theory, but a client who has QB2014 is not going to want to buy a new program, which is where my question comes into play.My frustration is that there seems to be no information AT ALL online regarding what accountants will be dealing with in terms of the updated versions. All the focus is on individuals and if they can use their set of books in Win 10. It’s going to be ugly if clients upgrade while we have their accountant’s copy, and then they can’t import the changes. What will happen? Will we need to do all the work over, or should we try to round trip more just to be safe? Clients will be upset to pay us for doing the work twice, so you can see how things can quickly become messy.Thank you again.

I’ll be honest, I don’t work with the accountant’s copy at all. It isn’t always reliable. If I have to work with a client file I’ll access the file directly in some way (remote log in, getting them to move to a hosted system, something like that).I haven’t tried working with an accountants copy when there are different operating systems between client and ProAdvisor. However, I wouldn’t expect that to be an issue. The file doesn’t change when you change operating systems. It could be something to do with the versions of products used, something like that.I keep different versions of QuickBooks on “virtual machines” using VMWare Workstation.

I can always match the version of QB and version of Windows with what a client has, if that is ever necessary. I continue to successfully use QB 2010 Premier Accounting in Win 10 sans sunset components (email, online banking, etc). My QB survived the Anniversary Update.

The only issue I have is that it complains about a printer on the Reconciliation Reports even though I do not print out any such report.For a client who was using QB Pro 2016 R1 in an early release of Win 10, I noticed that in some cases the data wasn’t always refreshing in realtime (not referring to Reports). I would have to go out of QB and come back in to see updated screens.

Anyone else seeing this?I continue to admonish QB users to activate Internet Explorer in Win 10. See my November post:Charlie, thanks for continuing to update us on QB as we venture on to Win 10 and beyond.Fred KagelFreehold Computer Training Ctr. Bonnie, I sent you a follow-up response earlier but it contained links and went to moderation. I just read Charlie’s response and realized the links probably resulted in my comment being deleted.That said, let me briefly reiterate my follow-up comment, sans links. Go to your search engine (I used Google) and search for something like “how to restore your Windows Registry.” You’ll find plenty of entries explaining how to do this, and it isn’t that hard.Also search for “free windows registry cleaners.” Again, you’ll find plenty of entries. One entry I found listed (as I recall) 26 free registry cleaners. At the top of the list is CCleaner.

It is been around for a long time. Above all, do your research and determine which registry cleaner best meets your needs. People have trouble with Windows 10 updates (as opposed to doing a clean install of Windows 10). Lots of junk left around – as Keith mentions, registry issues are a good place to look at.

Unfortunately, getting things going is a technical issue and there isn’t a blanket answer that we can give in a blog comment. Uninstalling and reinstalling doesn’t always clean up issues – there is a process called a “clean reinstall” that often helps. A normal uninstall of QB still leaves a lot of things laying about.