Slow execution along with validation/repair issues

Barry Demchak

Hi ...

I'm a long time user (about 20+ years) and have a pretty big-ish data file (about 200MB). Editing transactions has become horribly slow. I have run through validate/repair and super-validate/repair. No luck. I have also turned off unnecessary features like display animation. Can someone offer a suggestion for getting snappy transaction entry and edit?

Details:
* I have a 4 core (8 thread) Xeon processor, 64GB RAM, 4TB SSD. Everything but Quicken runs fast.
* Time between clicking on an investment account and register actually appearing: 11sec
* Time between clicking on Edit menu item on investment register entry and seeing transaction dialog box: 8sec ... main Quicken window gets repainted in black along the way
* Time between clicking on a checking account and register actually appearing: 3sec
* Time to edit a category in a checking account transaction: ~1sec

Every time I validate/repair, I see the same QDF entries:

QDF:
Validating your data.
Missing 1276 transaction(s) in account "xxx redacted xxx". Please check xxx redacted xxx account to verify your transaction history and reenter transactions as needed
...
Summary:
Quicken repaired 1458 transactions. No action required.

I also see many of these:

Quicken has found 1 stock split(s) for account "xxx redacted xxx", security "SL Green Realty Corp Common Stock", on 12/14/2021 that might be missing.



Are these recurring validation/repair messages meaningful?? Should I be able to get rid of them?? (The stock split messages are happening, I think, because downloaded transactions arrive as combinations of Add Shares and other sub-transactions.)

Could these validation issues be contributing to speed issues?

... or do I just have to get a faster PC?

Thanks!

Chris_QPW

Just to give the proper credit, @GeoffG was the one that suggested doing the copy (and it was very good suggestion).

And to answer your question, the copy disables all online services as part of the process, so yes you will have to reconnect all the online services.  It also changes the unique Id that is used to connect to the Quicken Cloud dataset, so you are also starting over with a new one of those.

Mark1104

here are Quicken's minimum system requirements 

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-system-requirements


appears you are below the minimum RAM requirement

Chris_QPW

Mark1104 said:

here are Quicken's minimum system requirements 

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-system-requirements


appears you are below the minimum RAM requirement

He has 64GB of RAM (far more than the minimum).

I note that the timings seem about right except for the times in the investment account and of course the black screen.
But it is also not too surprising since this is a known performance problem for any account that has a lot of transactions/securities/security lots.  The black screen is because of some bad programming and if Quicken gets too busy it won't update the screen.  This sort of assumes that the problem is only in the account(s) that have large amounts (and it doesn't have to be real large) transactions/securities/security lots.  If it is in even small investments accounts, it might be something else.  The general workaround is for this problem is to use the Archive Transactions menu item from the gear icon menu to move old security lots to another account.  This improves the performance in that account because Quicken only opens/caches accounts that you use directly.  This does assume that you have plenty of closed security lots.

On the validation errors these might be part of your problem but given that they seem to be in the investment area that I'm not much of an expert on, I hope someone else will have an idea of maybe a way to clean them up.  The Splits might be a missing transaction(s).

GeoffG

Recurring entries in a data validation is never a good sign. I do believe you data file is corrupt, hopefully not irreperably corrupted. You did not mention doing a File Copy, so I would suggest starting there. If you are not familiar with File Copy, the process rebuilds the Quicken file table by table and with any luck can isolate and remove the corrupted area. You of course need to use the copied file moving forward if the resolves your issue. You can always rename back if desired.



I would do this in addition to @Chris_QPW suggestion to Archive investment transactions no longer current.

Barry Demchak

Thanks, @GeoffG and @Chris_QPW ...

I took Chris' advice and made a copy. That seemed to clear up the recurring missing transactions in the QDF file. The Validate/Repair now shows no QDF errors. The missing stock splits in the QEL file remain after the copy ... I'm guessing that's an artifact of the Validate/Repair check itself, and doesn't reflect a problem with the actual transactions ... and can be ignored. (True??)

The timings for showing an investment register or transaction haven't changed with the copy. Still 11s to get into an account, and 7s to edit a transaction. However, it seems as though some caching is going on (as Geoff suggests). The second time I try this, I get 4s and 4s, respectively.

From this, it seems like I should use the copy instead of the original file, and consider getting a faster machine. (Who would have thought!??? ...)

It seems that with the copy, I have to re-enroll my accounts for online download. Is this true?

Is there any other effect of a copy that I should be aware of??

I sincerely appreciate your good advice, and hope to wrap this up safely ahead of tax time.

Thanks!

Chris_QPW

Just to give the proper credit, @GeoffG was the one that suggested doing the copy (and it was very good suggestion).

And to answer your question, the copy disables all online services as part of the process, so yes you will have to reconnect all the online services.  It also changes the unique Id that is used to connect to the Quicken Cloud dataset, so you are also starting over with a new one of those.

Barry Demchak

OK ... sorry for mixing up my experts' names. I'm not using Google Cloud, so it sounds like I just have to re-connect to the banks, and I'll be OK.

In case Quicken is listening ... I'm eager to connect back to Schwab ... and am hoping the Schwab connection is fixed soon.

Chris_QPW

Everyone using Quicken 2014 and beyond is using the "Quicken Cloud dataset".  This is basically, the place where Quicken stores things on the Quicken server for different purposes.  That might be just subscription information, or it might transactions/attachments in the case of Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect+, or for online bill payment information, or a whole lot more if one is using Sync to Mobile/Web.  Your Quicken Id plus the unique Id stored in the data file is used to connect it to the Quicken Cloud dataset on the Quicken server.