FI / Crowdstrike status?

Melman1 · July 21

I am surprised that there isn't a big thread about this. Most of my FI downloads have not worked since Friday. I'm sure they will come back "eventually" but I was expecting to find a lot of complaining about it here. Did I miss something?

Boatnmaniac · July 28

@Melman1 - Sorry about not getting back to you, sooner. I had a medical procedure that tied up my time from 7/24 thru 7/26. Incoming emails during that time got buried in my inbox and I'm still slowly working my way through them to get caught up.

Your runtime.dat files leave me scratching my head a little. I don't have a QDATA subfolder which is where your most recent runtime.dat file resides. Mine shows up in the Common subfolder but that one in your system shows it was last used on 7/9. I don't think it's an issue per se but it does make me wonder why there are 2 separate subfolders involved with one last being updated on 7/9 and the other last being updated on 7/23. It makes me think that after 7/9 there might have been a change in you Quicken setup caused by perhaps a version update? Either that or you have more than one QDF file in your system (each QDF file will have it's own runtime.dat file). I don't know, just a guess.

BTW, when I have had runtime.dat file corruption issues in the past, the accounts and financial institutions that showed "Not Available" would sometimes still download transactions for a while…sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. But eventually the transaction downloads would stop for all of those "Not Available" accounts.

Anyway, in answer to your question of which one to delete: Instead of deleting them, simply modify the file name for both of them to perhaps something like runtimeX.dat. Quicken will not recognize them so it will have the exact same effect of causing Quicken to recreate the runtime.dat file.

By renaming the runtime.dat files it also provides a means for changing them from runtimeX.dat back to runtime.dat should there be any issue encountered in setting up the new runtime.dat file. (I've never seen nor heard of there being issues with Quicken recreating the runtime.dat file but this does provide an added level of insurance just.)

Before proceeding: If you have not already done so, it is recommended that for all Spending accounts you enter and save the dollar amount for the Opening Balance transaction into the Memo field. Sometimes when changing/updating account connections, the Opening Balance dollar amount gets changed. If the correct dollar amount in saved in the Memo field it makes it very easy to determine when this issue has occurred and how to fix it.

Also, make sure that all of the transactions in your file are marked as R (for reconciled). If there a duplicate transactions later downloaded they will have C status so it will be easy to know which transactions might need to be deleted.

So, close Quicken, rename the runtime.dat files and then open Quicken and try running OSU. Some accounts (most likely DC accounts) might download properly. Then look at each account that did not update and go through the download setup process for those accounts, again, taking care to make sure the downloaded data is Linked to the accounts that are already in Quicken.

Let me know if you have any questions or post your results back here.

Boatnmaniac · July 21

No, I don't think you missed much. I, too, was expecting all kinds of posting about this or that that was adversely affected by the Crowdstrike issue but I saw very little about it. Maybe many users, like me were not really affected too much by it. For me, the issue yesterday morning was that Quicken was pretty slow to load and to initiate OSU. OSU ran a little slower, too, but it was not terribly slow, and all of the financial institutions did download as expected. And since this Crowdstrike issue was so widely covered in the media then maybe most people figured that any issues in Quicken might have been because of that so they decided to sit tight for a while and see what happens. Just a guess.

I know most financial companies and large businesses have multiple redundancies built into their systems. The last 2 businesses I worked at before retiring never did wholesale software updates. They had their primary system and 2 full backup systems. When a new software update was done, they would update only 1 of the backup systems and then test the heck out of it before updating the live system. The 2nd backup system would keep the old version software for quite some time (often for weeks) before the software on it was updated. By doing it this way they could pretty quickly revert to the old version software if there was any issue identified with the new version software. So, maybe that is why I wasn't affected much.

Melman1 · July 21

Well, my overall OSU is currently finishing with a blank box, there are no error messages to tell me what accounts failed update.

I just spent half an hour resetting several credit card accounts (Chase and Barclays) that I could see weren't getting updates. They got all the recent transactions, so I hope they are fixed.

I'm pretty sure that some of my investing accounts need to be reset too, but Quicken doesn't list any problems, so it's impossible to know with logging into the FI's directly and double checking the recent transactions.

(Quicken Deluxe R57.26 on Windows 10)

Boatnmaniac · July 21

A blank OSU Summary screen is a pretty good indication that nothing downloaded/updated during OSU. I have not seen any other posts this weekend saying they have had this issue but I haven't really searched this Community for posts on this subject this weekend.

Have you had this issue just starting this weekend or did it start earlier?

Or did it start after updating to the latest Quicken version with is R57.26 or some prior version?

Also, if you did run OSU yesterday and got transactions downloaded it is very likely that you would not have gotten many if any new transactions downloaded today since most financial institutions will download only on business days, on Saturday mornings and on the mornings of weekday holidays. So, for most people, running OSU on Sundays, if also running on the prior Saturday, is not a very productive effort.

There are ways to check if anything was updated without logging into the online accounts:

Go to the Account Registers. Above and to the left of the register, directly beneath the Account Name you should be able to see the date and time of the last download as well as which connection method (DC, EWC or EWC+) the account is set up for.
This same information should also be visible in Account List.

If this information is not visible in the Account Register nor Account List then there is another issue at play….perhaps a corruption of the runtime.dat file. That is not as scary of an issue as it sounds because data in the file is not lost or corrupted. It's just that a file that Quicken uses to connect with the file's Cloud Account is not functioning properly and might need to be replaced. You can read up on the step-by-step process for how to fix runtime.dat file corruption issues at Time date stamp [of last account update]. Scroll up to the top of that thread to see the process.

If your Account Register(s) and Account List shows that your investment account(s) did download during OSU, you could do a quick check to see if what is in your data file and what the investment company downloaded correlate by doing the following:

Account Register > upper right Gear icon > Reconcile Shares: You will get a popup that will confirm that the shares in Quicken and the shares reported by the investment company are in agreement or it will identify where there are shares discrepancies.
Below the Account Register on the right side click on the blue font Cash Balance dollar figure. You will get a popup showing the amount that your Quicken file cash balance is and another figure for what the investment company downloaded as the cash balance. Unless you bought or sold shares within the last 3 business days (it can take up to 3-4 business days for buy & sell transactions cash payments to clear), these amounts should be equal to each other.

If you have discrepancies in either of these areas, some additional leg work needs to be done to find out what the issue is.

Melman1 · July 21

Actually until this weekend, my (apparently successful) OSU's were finishing without putting up any status box at all. That was a recent change, I'll guess within the last month. Prior to that, there was always a status box.

I'll look at your other suggestions tomorrow, thanks for the input.

Melman1 · July 22

I just started up and did OSU. It finished with no status window. That's a new behavior that started a few weeks ago, and it usually leaves me wondering whether I did in fact do an update. If I open Tools → OSU Summary, the box for "Show this window only when there are errors" is checked. Did an update do that? It's not something I would have done. I've unchecked it.

I have 3 investment FI's, 2 bank FI's and 3 credit card FI's. The OSU Summary only lists 2 FI's (a bank and a brokerage) as being updated just now, neither had any new transactions. However, the other bank and 2 credit cards did get new transactions - but they are not listed in the summary window. Now that I think about it, it's been forever since OSU Summary listed all FI's updating at the same time.

In my Account List window, looking under Last Download -

All the Banking accounts (banks, credit cards) say "Not Available". Including the bank and 2 credit cards that just downloaded new transactions.
For Investments accounts, the accounts at the brokerage listed in the OSU Summary window all have a correct timestamp. Everything else says "Not Available". All accounts check out correctly for numbers of shares and for cash balance (which I've always done that with a Toolbar icon "Online Center"). (I don't know what you mean by also seeing this info "Above and to the left of the register, directly beneath the Account Name". I've never seen that.) And the accounts are correct when I compare them to their websites. I'm not missing any transactions.

Thanks again for the ideas.

Boatnmaniac · July 23

(I don't know what you mean by also seeing this info "Above and to the left of the register, directly beneath the Account Name". I've never seen that.)

Every account that is set up for downloading should look similar to the following picture with the Account Name shown at the top left corner and the date/time of the last download and the connection method directly beneath that (see what is shaded in yellow).

If what is shaded in yellow is not present and the Account List shows "Not Available" for the last download then it is a strong indication that the runtime.dat file has some sort of corruption. Sometimes doing Reset Account will fix it but if that does not work, then the process per the link I provided above might need to be followed to resolve the issue.

It should be noted that you will not get a runtime.dat file issue with accounts set up with Direct Connect. That's because DC connected accounts do not run OSU through the Quicken/Intuit servers and the runtime.dat file is tied to those servers. Your Investment Accounts are showing a date/time stamp because most are still set up with Direct Connect (although some have transitioned to Express Web Connect+ which will also be impacted by any runtime.dat file corruption issues).

Accounts that have a runtime.dat issue will not show newly downloaded transactions. I do not know if this is because the transactions do not actually download or if for some reason they simply are not visible in the register. Fixing the runtime.dat file issue will usually resolve this issue.

BTW, good catch on that box being checked for "Show this window only when there are errors". I should have mentioned that earlier. I suppose it is possible that a Quicken version update could have caused the box to be checked. It is a known issue that sometimes Quicken will change Preference settings when the version is being updated so I suppose it could also change that setting.

You might want to give that runtime.dat file fix process I provided the link for in my 7/21 post above a shot and see if that resolves the issue for you.

Melman1 · July 23

OK, none of my registers have that info that you highlighted in yellow. I don't believe they ever did. I found 2 runtime.dat files in Quicken. You are proposing I delete both? As to resetting accounts, my instincts tell me not to fix what ain't really broken.

Before I do anything, here is what my OSU Summary currently looks like (and it looked the same yesterday), only Ally (EWC) and Schwab (EWC+) ever report being updated. While other accounts do in fact get new transactions, for example Chase (EWC+) and Barclays (EWC) and Fidelity (DC).

And the Account List. Again, only Schwab and Ally have timestamps. The accounts that say "Not Available" are a mix of DC, EWC and EWC+.

james.mccoy1 · July 24

Melman1 / Boatnmaniac, I have the exact same issues which started 3 days ago. I have tried all Boatnmaniacs remedies which includes deleting the runtime.dat files and reseting/deactivating all my accounts. After the reactivating process all accounts downloaded properly and had a time date stamp. UNTIL the next OSU. The problem of the time date stamp missing and the update summary only showing 2 accounts when 7 were updated came back. Following Boatnmaniacs suggestion I've tried the process 3 times with the same results. The only thing I have not tried is reinstalling Quicken. Everything seems to be working and downloading perfectly except for the blank update summary and time date stamp. Maybe I should just put up with it but it bothers me to no end.

I am running quicken Ver 55.26 on windows 10. I've avoided updating to 57.26 and also avoid calling support due to poor past experiences.

If anyone has any ideas before I reinstall Quicken it would be appreciated.

Melman1 · July 28

Well I was hoping Boatnmaniac would return with advice for both of us but so far he has not. For me, nothing has changed since my last post.

Boatnmaniac · July 28