Running Quicken in a VM under Win11 - internet connection issue (edit)

TimJH

For many years I was able to run Quicken in a VirtualBox Win8 VM, with performance as good or better than native Win. With Win10 behavior became so flaky (frequent freezeups) that I gave up. Now in a Win11 VM Quicken at least loads well, but when I open my file it freezes with a "Please Check Internet Connection" message. I can browse just fine in the VM with Chome or Edge or Firefox.

UKR

Please do make sure you have at least 8 GB RAM assigned to your VM. Otherwise Windows will not perform and spend a lot of time paging to the the page file of Windows.

If you are getting "Oops, something went wrong" or "Check Internet Connection" …

1. To make sure that Quicken is allowed to update and save its configuration files please check if Windows Defender Controlled Folder Access feature Ransomware protection is enabled.
   If it is, configure it to add Quicken as an "allowed app" without turning off Ransomware protection. Perform the last step in
   https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7857675/faq-windows-defender-controlled-folder-access
2. Have you recently enabled a VPN?
   If so, this might be the problem. Try turning the VPN off, reboot with VPN disabled and see if that helps.
3. Is there a corporate or otherwise external firewall getting in the way? Contact the IT people maintaining the firewall and ask for permission.
4. Does your Antivirus software allow Quicken to connect to the Internet?
   Quicken needs to be able to establish outbound Internet connections for the program to work.
   For example, in McAfee Firewall, one user states "By editing the Quicken Firewall entry Selecting Incoming and Outgoing, and changing it from "Default" to "Open to all devices" it now works without having to turn off the entire firewall!"
   See https://www.quicken.com/support/configuring-firewalls
   Check your firewall settings and ensure the following three entries are present:

If necessary, contact the Antivirus / Firewall vendor's Support Center for assistance.

5. In Windows 11 or older Windows systems go to Windows Control Panel and select Internet Options (or in Internet Explorer, click on Tools / Internet options.)
Click the Advanced tab.
Scroll down the list to "Use TLS 1.x" and click to put checkmarks on all available choices even though some of them are no longer supported "Use TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 (if available)"
Turn off "Use SSL 3.0"
Click Apply. Reboot.
6. If all else fails: Try rebooting your network router. When done reboot your PC
7. Please let us know which of the above solved your problem.

TimJH

Yes, 8192MB assigned.
1. Ransomeware Protection off.
2. No VPN
3. Router firewall has no trouble with Quicken in native Win11 on multiple machines.
4. No 3rd party firewall yet, just the Win11 native one which doesn't offer a setting for Quicken, so I ****-u-me it's not blocking.
5. TLS changes as recommended.
6. Done. No joy.
7. FWIW, when I open my usual password-protected file the accounts briefly appear before the "Internet Connection" screen appears. After that the program freezes and usually must be closed with Task Manager. Of interest, if I first start to load a password-protected file and then Cancel out to the Open File window, then choose one without protection I get a different error:

Clicking OK yields "Unable to open selected file" and OK brings the menu window back. Starting Quicken again tries to open that file, shows the accounts, reverts to the "Internet Connection", but does no so thoroughly freeze that I can't X out of the program.

TimJH

Of course the same files work fine on other Quicken installations.

TimJH

Just for grins I gave the VM 16GB. No joy.

UKR

What else could be blocking some IP connections from Windows? Your VM configuration? Mac OS settings?

I'm afraid that problem's above my pay grade. You need to find a TCP/IP protocol expert and/or hope that someone else chimes in here with some better ideas. I'm fresh out. Sorry.

TimJH

No problem browsing to secure sites.

TimJH

The VM is set up with the adapter in NAT mode. Do I need to set up forwarding to particular ports?

Greg_the_Geek

I would suggest using Bridged.Mode for the Network Adapter instead of NAT.

TimJH

Thanks for the Bridged Mode suggestion. I already tried that because it seemed like a good idea. No joy. Back to NAT, with updates happening to Win11. Fingers crossed…

TimJH

I also tried messing with different network adapter emulators, but the only one that works is Intel PRO/1000 MT.

TimJH

Updates complete. No joy.

TimJH

I suspect there's a port I need to open…

TimJH

I found the place in the Windows Firewall where I could give explicit exception permission to qw.exe to pass through. No joy. In fact turning the firewall completely off is no help. As mentioned, other machines running Quicken have no trouble getting through the router so that wouldn't seem to be the problem with the VM.

TimJH

I know VirtualBox does not by default leave all ports open - which unusual ones does Quicken need? I think I can configure them open if I know where to start.

TimJH

Well, I had a talk with a Quicken support supervisor. Apparently, what ports Quicken uses to communicate is a state secret they refuse to divulge. No reason given.

My only alternative is to open everything, which hardly seems like a good security practice.

TimJH

Hey now!

Searching around I learned that QuickBooks needs Port 8019 open. I set up forwarding to my VM there and things now work!

Sshhh. Don't tell anyone.

Ps56k2

I seem to recall with the native Quicken software - it would see other network adapters that were not being used - like Ethernet cable - but not disabled, and get confused and try to access the Internet thru that extra adapter.

TimJH

I ran across mention of that issue with multiple adapters as well, didn't bother to note here I'd ruled it out.

Again, opening port 8019 seems to have fixed everything. I'll report if there are any further problems.

I have no idea why Quicken support is so secretive.

TimJH

Here's a real Go Figure moment: I forgot to open port 8019 to load the VM on a different machine and everything was fine. So I turned off forwarding on the original and everything is fine. Apparently Quicken just needed to phone home once through that port. We'll see if the need comes back…