Windows 7 quickbooks problem

[JOhnH]

I tried to open quickbooks today like I always do.
But I got an error message that said it couldn't open qbregistration.dat and that it may be read only.

I checked properties on the file and "read only" is not checked.
But the file type shows up as "video CD Movie (.dat)
and "Opens with: Nero Show Time Essentials. (which is weird).

Does anyone know how to fix this? What program should be opening this?

 

[airdale]

I tried to open quickbooks today like I always do.
But I got an error message that said it couldn't open qbregistration.dat and that it may be read only.

I checked properties on the file and "read only" is not checked.
But the file type shows up as "video CD Movie (.dat)
and "Opens with: Nero Show Time Essentials. (which is weird).

Does anyone know how to fix this? What program should be opening this?

OK, the usual suspects are kind of quiet here so I'll comment:

First, the majority of error messages are un-helpful, misleading, or downright wrong. The reason is that all errors can't be anticipated or diagnosed, so what you get is usually someone's best guess without there having been much analysis or thought.

If the file is not read-only it is probably corrupted. You're running regular backups, right? Just copy your most recent backup over the current qbregistration.dat* and you'll probably be good to go. Absent good backup, you can throw yourself on the mercy of QB's abysmal support and hope that someone will have good advice for you. Alternatively, a complete uninstall and reinstall will probably result in the registration file being recreated successfully. Be sure to backup your data files (Qdata.QDF and anything else you find in the same folder) prior to the uninstall. In theory, this is unnecessary. But in theory, theory and practice are the same.

Re the "video CD Movie (.dat)" mystery. There is really no mystery. One of the design errors in Windows was the assumption that most three-letter suffixes will be unique enough to use to identify the application that works with them. This is NOT true. "dat" is a particularly popular suffix. There are probably hundreds of programs that use it. Microsoft's wild guess that it is a movie is not surprising and should not bother you. When you double-click a file and it is sent to the wrong application, just right-click and use the "Open With" dialog to select the right application. In many cases, too, the file suffix is one that is used by an application like QB but it is not directly openable like the *.QDF file is. It is just opened during the normal course of business and QB will almost certainly not recognize it using "Open With."

*Actually, what I would do is to rename it "qbregistration.dat.hide" or "qbregistration.dat.killme" and then copy the backup file into the same folder. This munging of the file name lets you keep the old file available in the extremely unlikely event that you need to get it back. Using "hide" or "killme" is also a trigger that you can probably delete the file when you wander back to the folder in a few months and wonder what it is.

BTW if you are running a business and NOT backing everything up regularly, you are courting disaster.

 

[JOhnH]

Thanks. All of your comments are right on.
Fortunately, I do have a fairly recent backup. It will probably take me an hour or two to re-enter data since that backup.

I did finally got hold of their tech support, and your opinion is totally warranted. They had me uninstall QB, run a "clean install" procedure and re-install from scratch. Of course, I should have realized that a "clean install" was going to start me from scratch as it seems to have deleted my company file.

Tomorrow I will restore from Friday's backup. The good thing is that QB has been getting dreadfully slow lately. The last time I re-installed and restored it sped things up considerably.

OK, the usual suspects are kind of quiet here so I'll comment:

First, the majority of error messages are un-helpful, misleading, or downright wrong. The reason is that all errors can't be anticipated or diagnosed, so what you get is usually someone's best guess without there having been much analysis or thought.

If the file is not read-only it is probably corrupted. You're running regular backups, right? Just copy your most recent backup over the current qbregistration.dat* and you'll probably be good to go. Absent good backup, you can throw yourself on the mercy of QB's abysmal support and hope that someone will have good advice for you. Alternatively, a complete uninstall and reinstall will probably result in the registration file being recreated successfully. Be sure to backup your data files (Qdata.QDF and anything else you find in the same folder) prior to the uninstall. In theory, this is unnecessary. But in theory, theory and practice are the same.

Re the "video CD Movie (.dat)" mystery. There is really no mystery. One of the design errors in Windows was the assumption that most three-letter suffixes will be unique enough to use to identify the application that works with them. This is NOT true. "dat" is a particularly popular suffix. There are probably hundreds of programs that use it. Microsoft's wild guess that it is a movie is not surprising and should not bother you. When you double-click a file and it is sent to the wrong application, just right-click and use the "Open With" dialog to select the right application. In many cases, too, the file suffix is one that is used by an application like QB but it is not directly openable like the *.QDF file is. It is just opened during the normal course of business and QB will almost certainly not recognize it using "Open With."

*Actually, what I would do is to rename it "qbregistration.dat.hide" or "qbregistration.dat.killme" and then copy the backup file into the same folder. This munging of the file name lets you keep the old file available in the extremely unlikely event that you need to get it back. Using "hide" or "killme" is also a trigger that you can probably delete the file when you wander back to the folder in a few months and wonder what it is.

BTW if you are running a business and NOT backing everything up regularly, you are courting disaster.

 

[airdale]

... I should have realized that a "clean install" was going to start me from scratch as it seems to have deleted my company file. ...

In theory that shouldn't happen.

Glad to hear that things seem to be working out. BTW you should be backing up the whole machine, not just the QB data file. That way you will have things like a good copy of qbregistration.dat and may not have to go through the whole uninstall/reinstall dance next time something like this happens.

 

[JOhnH]

In theory that shouldn't happen.

Glad to hear that things seem to be working out. BTW you should be backing up the whole machine, not just the QB data file. That way you will have things like a good copy of qbregistration.dat and may not have to go through the whole uninstall/reinstall dance next time something like this happens.

You are right of course. I do have a nightly program that backs up "almost" everything over the internet at night. But I was good with doing a restore because in the past it had the added benefit of speeding things up. But I don't remember losing my QBW file last time.

But I do have a restore question:
Is it better to restore from backup and re-enter a small amount of recent data,
Or is it better to restore a current company file (.QBW)? I think I heard that backing up and restoring gets some stuff that is not stored in the company file. But I don't know what "stuff".

 

[asgcpa]

I always restore from backups.

 

[airdale]

You are right of course. I do have a nightly program that backs up "almost" everything over the internet at night. But I was good with doing a restore because in the past it had the added benefit of speeding things up. But I don't remember losing my QBW file last time.

But I do have a restore question:
Is it better to restore from backup and re-enter a small amount of recent data,
Or is it better to restore a current company file (.QBW)? I think I heard that backing up and restoring gets some stuff that is not stored in the company file. But I don't know what "stuff".

Re losing the QBW, remember that even paranoids have enemies. NEVER uninstall/reinstall a program without making a copy of that program's data files. I use a variation of what I said above. I will rename the data folder from Data to Data.hide and then I will make a new Data folder and copy everything from Data.hide into it. Only then will I do the uninstall. At that point I do not care what happens to Data because I have a copy of everything that was there. In the happy event I don't need it, I will delete Data.hide after a week or more.

Re the two restore options I think you are referring to the internal QB backup versus a broader computer backup that includes the QB stuff and everything else on the machine.

I'd first try restoring from the QB backup because that more or less guarantees that you roll back correctly to where you were when you made the backup. The problem with this is that errors like the one you had with qbregistration.dat will probably not be corrected by a restore from the QB internal backup. That is why you need a full machine backup.

Ideally, your backups are stored off-site. (There is really no urgency to this. Just be sure to take one off site the day before the fire.) My scheme is two-level. First, I have daily backups going to an NAS RAID disk drive on my network. Then monthly or so I back up that box onto another drive and that drive is stored in my fire-resistant gun safe. Not as good as off-site but for me it is adequate protection.

HTH