How I got Quicken to be lightning quick again -- is it too risky?

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  • markus1957
    markus1957 SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
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    As mentioned earlier by another commenter, take a look at the Cloud Sync log. The transmission time of actual data is measured in fractions of a second. All of the 2-3 minutes is consumed by the local computer waiting for real data to be transmitted. Contact with the server is made several times a minute and results in a (paraphrasing) "still waiting, yeah it's gonna be a while, I'm working on it, response from the server".

    Back in the day, EWC was faster because it was mostly just doing a nightly aggregation of all EWC FI data at the server level which then downloaded it on demand to the local machine. It took Update Now to force a call to the FI for data. Now EWC appears to be more real time where the server logs on to the FI each time you perform an OSU, except for some undisclosed time period where if you do OSUs back-to-back it goes quick the second time because no FI contact is made.

    Also mentioned previously many times, is that slowness during OSU and slowness navigating within the software are two entirely different issues and probably should not be discussed in the same thread.

  • retird
    retird Member ✭✭✭✭
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    @Chris_QPW …. Lots of hypotheticals but what % of customers actually come here….3%, 5%…??? How many have the issue here but don't post?

    From what little time I spent looking at the sanitized file and logs I sent it looks like there is alot of information. Most of the sanitized files and logs folks took the time to send will show different FI's I think. Why would Quicken ask for them if they are not that usefull?

    You can search here on the word "slow" or the word "slowness"…… how many posts (threads are available)?

    The Alert for this issue in located in the Alert section if you know it is there you can see if any updates on progress are made….. no update or any ETA given since August 9… Glad I bookmarked the Alert….. most don't even know it's there….

    Windows 11 (2 separate computers)..... Quicken Premier.. HAVE USED QUICKEN CONTINUOUSLY SINCE 1985.

  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2023
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    @retird I don't believe logs aren't useless, for a lot of problems. I was talking about a particular problem (GUI hangup problems). The logs for instance, are very important for problems with One Step Update. In most cases though, the logs are only the start, they give hints, seldom do they give really point out where the actual problem is. That takes reproducing the problem and digging in to finding it and a solution.

    And that brings me to what you said, and you didn't seem to get from @markus1957 's comment.

    You can't just add up the threads that say Quicken is slow. Quicken can be slow for a lot of reasons, but for most people they lump any slowness into the same category. That implies that they believe that if the developers fix one slowdown all slowdowns will be fixed, and that just isn't going to happen.

    EDIT With this kind of thinking why don't we just have one category "Its broke", then you can say that they never work on anything, because at any given time something in Quicken is going to be broken. Then we can just point at that one thread and say see everyone is reporting this problem.

    And this is the reason the other users are asking for "your book", to try to separate out one kind of slowness from another, and trying to find workarounds to help you. Or give more information to the Quicken developers so they can implement a solution.

    When I talk about the old APIs and such I'm talking about a "generic problem" that can have affects all over the program. There are also going to be problems that are central to just one part of Quicken. I don't believe that the old APIs kind of problem will be fixed any time sound (if ever), but for the problems that aren't like that there is a much better chance of them being fixed, within limits.

    You and others give the impression that Quicken Inc/the management/developers all sit around and say, "There are a lot of customers that are having slowdown problems, but we don't care about that, let's go instead and just work on features or something else." You are entitled to your beliefs, but I don't believe that. I believe that they are definitely concerned about such problems and are trying to work on them. The length of time that it is taking to me doesn't represent their desire to ignore it, but instead represents the difficultly of the problem.

    There is an old saying "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it." If these problems were easy to fix, they would have long ago fixed them.

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  • Boatnmaniac
    Boatnmaniac SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2023
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    The length of time that it is taking to me doesn't represent their desire to ignore it, but instead represents the difficultly of the problem.

    I agree. But I also think the difficulty of the situation is compounded by the fact that Quicken, Inc. is a pretty small company. I seem to recall they have only a few hundred employees and that number gets divvied up between Engineering, Quality, Operations, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, HR, Customer Support and perhaps a few other departments. It also gets divvied up between Quicken Classic and Quicken Simplifi.

    On top of that there are over 14,000 financial institutions that Quicken downloads from and works with as well as needing to work with Intuit.

    Then take a look at the number of issues being posted about in Community that might require technical support to resolve.

    That's a lot of tugging that occurs on a relatively small number of people. So it takes time to address and fix them…sometimes a lot of time. And it also means that the engineering and quality teams will need to do some heavy duty and sometimes controversial prioritizing.

    A lot of Quicken users are not aware of all this. I get the impression that many think Quicken is some big conglomerate with a lot of people they can simply and quickly throw at issues and that simply is not the case.

    From my perspective I don't think there is just a simple switch that they can pull to resolve the slowness issue some users are experiencing. For me (last Mar/Apr) I found that there were some unnecessary apps that were set to run during Windows startup that were causing some sort of conflict with Quicken. I changed the start up settings so only necessary apps would automatically run when I booted up Windows. For me that was like a light switch and Quicken has been running pretty fast ever since. I remember a couple of people saying that helped them, too, but others said it didn't. And why is it that some people are having extreme slowness issues but apparently most people are not experiencing that? It just leads me to believe this slowness issue is a very complex issue with perhaps many different causes and solutions.

    Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R55.26 on Windows 11

  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
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     It just leads me to believe this slowness issue is a very complex issue with perhaps many different causes and solutions.

    Absolutely, there isn't any doubt in my mind about that.

    Good point on the size of Quicken Inc.

    The only reason I even bring up the old APIs is because people want to know why Quicken of all their programs is slow. Over the years I have definitely found that if there is a way to find "configuration problems" on a machine, Quicken will find them! And the only real explanation for why that is the case has to be the Quicken has so many APIs in it that have to be accessing really old library/system code.

    But on the other hand, if every part of Quicken had been rewritten for the new APIs Quicken would have far less features.

    And in reality, I don't think this where most of the slowdowns are coming from. It is again one of those "lets lump everything into one group" thinking.

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  • Snowman
    Snowman Member ✭✭✭✭
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    One last item that I forgot to mention. If you have built your own computer check on your motherboards website for any BIOS firmware updates that may be available. I just updated mine yesterday and there was a noticeable increase in speed in all programs 32 and 64 bit. Is you have a graphics card plugged into the motherboard check for the latest driver update.

    If you bought your computer many manufacturers offer and application for the computer that will find BIOS updates and if the graphics is built in to the motherboard there should be a procedure to update the graphics driver as well.

  • retird
    retird Member ✭✭✭✭
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    Yep one should check for updates. My computers' manufacturers support allows me to check for any updates and they also notify me when updates are available. Windows also has a feature to show updates available. I always make sure that my computers get continually updated. Neither computer is set to automatically update as I verify each and every update before updating. Slowness still exists only with Quicken…

    Windows 11 (2 separate computers)..... Quicken Premier.. HAVE USED QUICKEN CONTINUOUSLY SINCE 1985.

  • Snowman
    Snowman Member ✭✭✭✭
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    @retird For Windows updates I will use for Windows programs. For motherboard or add on graphics cards I go straight to the source.

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