Quicken Shows blank screen. Mouse shows busy cursor

Bertilak

Perhaps this is a temporary outage. When I open Quicken all I get is a blank screen with a busy mouse cursor.

Task manager shows Quicken is "not responding" and is using 23% of CPU.

Anyone else with  the same problem?

Should I wait it out or contact support?

Frankx

HI @Bertilak,

Sorry to hear you are having technical problems.  If you can't open your desktop application - it likely wouldn't be a "temporary outage".  Have you tried shutting the computer down and rebooting?  Also, can you tell us which versions (and builds if applicable) of both Quicken and Windows you are running?

Frankx

Rocket J Squirrel

I would wait it out. "Not responding" does not mean "dead," especially if CPU is being consumed. I would give it 30-60 minutes before giving up. Killing Q while it is using CPU can result in data corruption.

Bertilak

Always at the latest Quicken and Windows 10 as I update whenever offered.

Last Windows update was a week or so ago with no Quicken problems until today.

Rebooted my Thinkpad and my Router without effect.

My guess was that it might have something to do with connecting to the Quicken Cloud.

mshiggins

Is the data file size growing and growing while the cursor spins?

Bertilak

mshiggins said:

Is the data file size growing and growing while the cursor spins?

That is a distinct possibility. The latest file is about 370K but yesterday's backup is about 250K. I did not monitor and observe the size while I was waiting for it to open but see no reason why it grew so much.

UKR

Quicken crashes, hangs or loops at startup?

Please try this:

Reboot Windows.
Close Quicken (or do not start it at all).
Use Windows File Explorer to locate and rename your current Quicken data file, for example, if it's called Qdata.QDF rename it to QdataX.QDF
Usually your file is located in your \Documents\Quicken folder.

Having done that start Quicken as usual from the Start Menu or Desktop Quicken icon.
If Quicken cannot find your current data file during startup it should just simply load the program and give you either a nearly blank menu screen or one that has options to start as new user, restore from backup, etc.

• If you get to this point without Quicken crashing
• click on File in the Menu bar. Select the Validate function. Select the renamed Quicken data file and see if Quicken can access and repair it.
• If the data file is beyond repair, try to restore your data file from the most recent Manual or Automatic backup. Go back to restoring successively older backups until you find a file that works
  https://www.quicken.com/support/how-backup-or-restore-your-quicken-data

• If you can't get Quicken to start at all,
• uninstall Quicken using this procedure:
  http://www.quicken.com/support/using-qcleanui-uninstall-quicken
• When done, reboot your computer and then reinstall Quicken from  your account at quicken.com, your CD or saved downloaded installation file and allow it to update to the latest available patch release level.

Bertilak

I have been on the phone with Quicken support for a little over an hour and we did all the things above. We also:

1. Logged on to Windows as a different user and installed Quicken under that ID. The problem persisted.
2. Restored backups from weeks and months ago. All failed the same way.

The ONE thing that has changed is Quicken went to R28.28.

mshiggins

If the file size is growing while the cursor is spinning, you could have a runaway reminder. To confirm the issue, close Quicken, set the date on your computer back to a date before the problem started, then try to open Quicken. 

If Quicken opens, you'll then need to look for the runaway reminder - a reminder that has generated hundreds or even thousands of transactions. Delete that reminder. 

Once the problem reminder is eliminated, you can set the computer date back to today's date. 

You can can then recreate the reminder and delete the unneeded transactions. 

Bertilak

I don't think that is the problem because restoring ancient backups does not fix the problem. I reach that conclusion not because of any dates in the restored backups but because if I recently messed up a reminder that messed up reminder will not be in an older backup.

Anyway, I will give it a try!