Lost the ability to retrieve my file info and backups are corrupt - please help

fmb1

Tried to pay a bill today and Quicken would not let me - through trouble shooting with their help desk found out that the program can not retrieve my "file info". We tried to use a back up copy as I back up religiously - the back up per them is corrupt - in fact it appears that all the back ups I have done for the past year or more are corrupt. i have previously done the year end routine, but it has been a couple of years.

Since we could not do a restore - we tried to export and import into various accounts which it then imported information from 2006 forward which made no sense since those years have been archived and I asked it only to forward info from 1/1/2020 - and I don't mean investment accounts, we are now talking just my checking and saving.

I am being told that I now need to reinvent the wheel and create all new accounts and restore all my data by hand because the files that I was dutifully saving every time I use quicken are corrupt.

Note, I can still download my data etc, but because the program can't somehow find my profile information - it is not stable, bill pay is gone and any back-ups I do save now continue to be corrupt - which makes not sense -how can it continue to to back-up corrupt info.

I have been a quicken user since probably version 2 or 3 well over 25 years and I can not tell you how frustrating it is to be told that all the backups that I have done religiously are worthless and it's my fault - the program had nothing to do with it.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, I really need at least my 2020 info from January and it seems I will now have to enter all of that by hand.

GeoffG

Before giving up on the backups, do you have access to another PC/Laptop? If so, I would install a fresh copy of Quicken and try to restore the most recent backup. You will need to validate each restore until you hopefully find a valid copy. If that is successful, I would completely uninstall Quicken with their utility and reinstall on your main PC.

fmb1

thank you , I will give that at try in the morning

q_lurker

Are you sure you were really communicating with true Quicken support?  I too am doubtful all your backups are corrupt.  That sounds an awful lot like a scammer trying to sell you something you don't need or trying to get access to your computer.  See: https://www.quicken.com/support#windows to get to Chat and Phone options. 

fmb1

Q—_lurker... if I were you might gage thought the same.. but yes it was legitimately Quicken. I was on the phone with them for well over 4 hours with a lot of testing etc. I too have trouble understanding how it could save corrupt files daily or that it wouldn’t tell me at some point there was a problem.

If I create a new file all works fine.. still very confused and frankly very upset

Rich_M

Also, I am curious about where your backups are located, using a USB drive is not a reliable medium for long term backup storage.  After repeated use over long periods of time these drives often fail and become unreadable.

fmb1

I am using an external Western Digital Hard drive

Rich_M

I would follow GeoffG's suggestions, its hard to believe all of your backups are bad.