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I am at my wits end with the slowness.

jennie.griner

I can't take it much longer. It's been going on for way too long and I have literally tried every trick in the book to fix it. It takes forever to do ANYTHING in Quicken. Change accounts, click on a transaction, enter a new transaction, save a transaction, update a split, scroll through the register. When I say anything, I mean ANYTHING.

I create a year end copy every year. I have switched to simple investing where possible. I have archived investment transactions. I have switched to tracking investment cash in a checking account so that there are fewer investment transactions overall. I have validated my data file. I have done the BIG validate. I've rebuilt investing lots. I've corrected investing price history. I have tried to merge/delete categories. I've deleted unused memorized payees. I have created copies (to troubleshoot other issues) and had to set up my online banking again multiple times.

Quicken Validate.PNG

I've followed the steps on this page multiple times https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-performance-troubleshooting/

I do not store my files on a network/shared drive. They are not stored on a compressed drive. I meet all the system requirements. I cannot update my computer to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations, but this has been going on for a lot longer than Windows 11 support questions have been around. Mobile Sync is off. I have tried turning off background sync (Google Drive, OneDrive, Drop Box) even though files aren't stored there. I've tried tune up applications even though the only thing that's slow is Quicken.

Quicken 1.PNG

I don't know why it says expired on January 27th, it's not expired. It knows it's not expired as I still have the online functionality.

I have tried suffering and just dealing with it. I can't do it any more. I am about ready to throw away the 15 years I've used Quicken and the money I JUST PAID to renew for the year and say screw it and find another product. What else can I do?

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Slowness

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Accepted answers

Chris_QPW

Totally insane that they will not invest in updating this software to something remotely resembling modernity in terms of speed for what is essentially just some data entry into a database.

Imagine the frustration of trying to maintain a very old program and add new features as directed by the customers and upper management when there is such a basic misunderstanding of what Quicken really is.

Quicken isn't "just some data entry into a database".

People way underestimate all the features that are in Quicken.

The Quicken Mac rewrite was mentioned. Do people realize that Intuit basically went without revenue from Quicken Mac for about 8 years because of it? Do they realize that to this day it still doesn't have all the features of the version they had to rewrite mostly because Apple dropped the APIs they were using? Let along get all the newer features that Quicken Windows has had added?

I all you need is "some data entry into a database", try finding a database that fits the needs. How about the non-database of Excel or why not even Quicken Windows 2013.

If people wonder why there isn't any real competitors to Quicken Desktop here are the main points in my opinion.

Very large feature set that is hard to recreate.
Online features like transaction aggregation and online bills/bill pay have only a very small amount of third-party service providers and the lack of standardized protocols at financial institutions and billers make maintaining this extremely labor intense and costly.
Customer base is a niche market that is dying, not growing. Online personal finance services are most likely the future, but probably still not a robust of a solution. There is a reason why Intuit and Microsoft got out of this business and why Quicken Inc is such a small company.

All comments

Rocket J Squirrel

Have you tried disabling AVG Antivirus? I've never used it so can't say whether it slows systems down. But it's worth a try to disable it if you haven't already.

markus1957

If turning off your anti-virus does not improve speed, I'd say you're likely suffering from Quicken being a resource hog on a machine that does not have the horsepower to overcome that. This is speculation based on your comment that you can't update to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations.

The disconnect in your subscription date could also be causing some problems. You might try a complete uninstall of the software, including deleting the Quicken program file folder and the hidden Quicken folders under Program Data and your User folder. After a reboot, reinstall using the download in your Quicken account online.

The screenshots you provided indicate you might be better served using an online product like Quicken Simplifi. You can upload your desktop file to it and use the trial period to see if it works better with your hardware limitations. But it might not be long before outdated Win 10 security protocols begin to get deprecated and limit online access. If possible, I'd invest in an updated PC.

Rocket J Squirrel

@markus1957

If turning off your anti-virus does not improve speed, I'd say you're likely suffering from Quicken being a resource hog on a machine that does not have the horsepower to overcome that. This is speculation based on your comment that you can't update to Windows 11 due to hardware limitations.

I don't think the inability to update to Win11 is an issue. Remember how old QWin is. I also have an old Win10 PC which can't be updated due to hardware. It runs QWin just as fast as my Win11 PC.

I mentioned disabling AV above but failed to elaborate. I added QWin to the exclusion list of MS Defender on both PCs and that did noticeably speed things up. I theorize that QWin was driving Defender crazy because of how frequently it opens and closes files.

jennie.griner

Turning off anti-virus has no impact.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540101#Comment_20540101

It's a gaming laptop that can run resource intensive online games where the only limitation has been internet speed. The hardware limitation is the motherboard chipset, not the resources. It's a 2.9GHz with 32 GB RAM. The requirements are 1GHz with 1 GB RAM. It just happens to be one of the chipsets that aren't supported by 11. CPU is running at 20%; memory at 57%. Just doing basic operations within Quicken. I'd like to invest in a new PC, but I'm not at a point where I can justify the expense if the PC is still usable (with the exception of Quicken being trash).

I tried using the online version when it was introduced and it did not meet my needs. I will look into Simplifi and see if it's any better now. I guess I'll try the clean install and see if there is some old junk, I'm not loving the idea of having to fix all my online accounts for the second time in a month though. I'll have to work on that this weekend.

As for the subscription date, it said it expired a month ago, but I've been having problems for over a year. I don't think that it's related, but since it was in the screenshots, I wanted to mention that I verified that everything was connected. I resolved that by refreshing sign in.

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540108#Comment_20540108

I didn't see any difference, but I also just did a quick check and maybe it wasn't fully disabled. It might be worth investigating adding it to the exceptions list, though I feel like I remember trying that already. I'll have to look into it when I have some more time to play. Thanks for the suggestion.

markus1957

Your data file is small as are the number of accounts/transactions. Operations in your file should be very fast.

How do you define "takes forever"?

I have a password protected file about 3 times your size with more than 50X the transactions. I'm working on a rather old Microsoft Surface Pro 7 tablet with only 4G RAM, an i3 1.2GHz CPU, SSD and Win 11. It can take-

10 seconds to get to the password prompt,

15 seconds after entering password to be functional,

15 seconds to open my largest investment account,

10 seconds to accept downloaded transactions in that account,

2 seconds to open my largest spending account and 2 seconds to enter a transaction,

scrolling thru a spending account register is very fast, investment accounts are slower but improved from a while back,

Reports render in 5 seconds or less,

Updating a split is also a few seconds.

FYI, a clean install as I described above will not require you to reconnect your online accounts.

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540169#Comment_20540169

I know it should be very fast, almost instant, which it used to be for many years when I started using Quicken (even when I was storing my data file on a shared drive). That's why it's so frustrating that it's slow especially when I know that it never was. When I close and reopen Quicken the performance is better (but not ideal), and as I keep it open and continue to use it, it degrades while the system usage stays the same.

Times are until my cursor stops spinning and I can click something else:

Action	Timing	Notes
Opening account list	4s
Selecting an account (initial load)	6.5s	182 transactions 1 downloaded transaction
Switching accounts (initial load)	4s	0 transactions
Switching back to Acct 1	4s
Save split (no changes)	4.5s	Paycheck
Edit Reminder (no changes)	4.75s
Reconcile transaction	4.5s	No other changes

IMO, with the small amount of data I have, anything over 1s is too long. Especially when that adds up quickly as I'm accepting/adding/editing multiple transactions at a time. These times are also immediately after launch and completing transaction download and just get worse as I continue to use the program.

The fact that you think that 10s to show a password prompt and another 15s to get access after entering the password is acceptable tells me that the numbers I've posted above mean nothing to you. But it is a severely degraded experience from what it once was and it has been for quite a while (seemingly tied to them ending support for non-subscription versions in 2020), and it is unacceptable.

I tried to let my investment accounts be to blame for it based on all the posts I'd seen. I did everything I could, and it just didn't help. When my investments moved in a way that those 10 years of transactions transactions could be archived, I was so excited I was going to have old Quicken back after my year end copy. But it's just more of the same.

FWIW, I added qw.exe to my antivirus exceptions and did a clean install. The speed is the same.

Rocket J Squirrel

@jennie.griner wrote

FWIW, I added qw.exe to my antivirus exceptions and did a clean install. The speed is the same.

The .exe file is just the tip of the iceberg. QWin has lots of other stuff you'll have to exempt to see meaningful results.

C:\Program Files(x86)\Quicken
C:\ProgramData\Quicken
C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Quicken
C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Local\Quicken
qwSubprocess.exe

This is shown in detail with some other tips in this FAQ.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7915476/faq-are-there-any-windows-settings-that-can-improve-quicken-s-performance

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540795#Comment_20540795

I knew I had found a post like that a while ago and just confirmed it when I saw Quicken was already in my graphics settings. I could have sworn that I added the exceptions to my AV as well, so I was surprised they weren't there, but maybe I forgot that I removed them when I didn't see any improvement.

I've done all that again and I'll try for a bit, but I'm not seeing any improvements right away.

There are a few independent approaches I suggest to try:

Open your data file and then disable the the Internet. Perform those 'slow' actions that are not Internet dependent and see if you notice a difference. or
Do you have temporary access to another computer where you can temporarily install Quicken and test it there?
Create a brand new data file and add some of your accounts and test the speed on this new data file.

The results of these tests may point to where the issue may or may not be.

As an FYI, up until a few years ago I had a secondary old low-end laptop from 2009 from Win7 days with 4GB ram and a slow spinning 5400rpm hard disk. At some point I upgraded it to Win10 and eventually hacked it to upgrade to Win11 and Quicken still worked well. So I don't think the age of the hardware itself is a major issue but rather either some unwanted running process is causing a conflict, or most-likely your Quicken file is corrupted - which unfortunately does happen to many of us.

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540802#Comment_20540802

Thanks for the suggestions and insight.

Turning off internet has no impact.
Unfortunately don't have access to another computer I can install on.
Created a new file, added just my main bank.
- Deleted old transactions, accepted "current" ones and it was all still super slow. Disabled online access for all accounts, no change.
- I even created another new file and didn't connect any accounts. Create a checking and a savings added a few transactions and switching between the two still takes about 2 seconds, which is longer than I would expect with 2 accounts and 4 transactions.

As far as a corrupted file, how is that fixed other than validate which returns no errors? Creating an entirely new file from scratch right now seems worse than gouging out my eyes as just adding my main bank for that test was slower than molasses and I had to delete 2 years worth of old transactions that my bank sent across especially since it already didn't seem to make any difference at all in the performance.

What that does seem to tell me is that there is definitely a conflict somewhere that hasn't yet been identified. I guess I'm going to have to go through support, and will still likely not get a resolution.

As far as a corrupted file, how is that fixed other than validate which returns no errors?

That is the primary method, and some data corruptions cannot be fixed. Given that a new test file is also super slow, there is not sufficient info to think that you have a data corruption. So I'd rule it out for now.

What that does seem to tell me is that there is definitely a conflict somewhere that hasn't yet been identified. I guess I'm going to have to go through support, and will still likely not get a resolution.

Precisely. I agree!

There are users who suffer from poor performance, but since there are also many who experience great performance, I would like to encourage you to not think of this as purely a Quicken issue - I know that is difficult and frustrating. Rather it is an unknown issue/conflict that hopefully you'll come to terms with.

How would I go about this?

~~Uninstall and reinstall Quicken: One of the SuperUsers suggested that but you didn't confirm if you did that.~~ Seems like you did.
Check your hardware using the chkdsk command.
Reinstall your Operating system and I think in Win10 it is something like "Repair Install" or "In-place Upgrade" where it keeps your existing programs intact. ~1 hour-ish. If still problematic …
Finally I would perform a fresh installation of the OS, and once done, first install Quicken and reevaluate the performance BEFORE installing your 'other' programs. Then install your 'other' programs one at time and systematically retest Quicken at every stage so see when the problem (or conflict) starts. I realize that most people are hesitant to perform a fresh install of the OS since getting your system back to where it was takes a long time.

Good luck and sorry that you are going thru this.

markus1957

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540787#Comment_20540787

Quicken is a patchwork of very old coding with some newer coding bootstrapped on to it. I'm glad I asked the question because I'm pretty sure if a developer weighs in on your performance metrics, they're going to say the software is doing the best it can. It's not going to change until it's totally rewritten.

Rocket J Squirrel

A less drastic approach to the one above would be to use Windows's system file checkers.

DISM /ONLINE /CLEANUP-IMAGE /RESTOREHEALTH

SFC /SCANNOW

These should fix corrupted Windows system files without any ill effects.

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540828#Comment_20540828

The reason I see it as a Quicken issue is that Quicken is the only application that I have that has suffered degraded performance despite monthly updates. We know that the code is outdated and not optimized. It's not a secret.

I'm not doing a reinstall of Windows (I'll get a new PC first), but I have run all of the optimization/check tools I can run including those listed by @Rocket J Squirrel above.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20540839#Comment_20540839

If that's the case, and that's how their product management feels, then they won't miss my subscription, because I won't continue to pay for software that has degraded in performance for even the most basic of functions. Most software companies would be looking at RCAs for why the performance degrades instead of making excuses and blaming users.

Today the times seem slower despite doing all the PC check/clean up that I did yesterday. Of course I didn't have my phone ready to capture all the times, as I expected it to be the same or maybe better. Ultimately, I've accepted that they aren't going to investigate or fix the issues because they're invested in limited mobile options rather that refactoring their complex system and that means that I need to find another option since it's pretty much confirmed that it's nothing in my data file I can tweak and nothing short of a new PC will improve things (which isn't guaranteed to solve the issue for me) as I don't expect any more in depth troubleshooting from a support ticket to see what the conflict is.

I'm also not paying $50 to try Simplifi to see if it will work for me only to have to get refunded especially when I just renewed my Deluxe in January. The fact that they got rid of a free trial for "try it risk free" is gross. So many companies do that so that you have to talk to someone to get a refund and they make you feel guilty for wanting your money back when their application isn't what you were expecting. It's predatory and I've been burned before.

markus1957

I've done a few troubleshooting things with my file that relate to the slowness issue. Bottom line, The OP times are probably the best that can be achieved unless the developers make significant efforts to speed the software up. Applying tweaks is not going to change that.

A Copy template of my production file is not any faster at most operations. I then stripped the copy down to one checking account by deleting all other accounts and template copied that file. I found after deleting everything I could in the stripped-down file that my internal QDF file (Ctrl + Help>About Quicken) has about 35MB of "bloat" compared to a new file created with only an import of the checking account transactions.

I then did a QXF export of my production file and imported it to a new blank file. First off, I was pretty impressed that the file pretty much came back intact and would only take a moderate amount of effort to get it to match my production file exactly. So, kudos to the developers for their work on QXF transfers. I found the new file to be about 35MB smaller than my production file.

I thought maybe with the bloat gone, it might be faster so before making a bunch of corrections, I just checked to see if it was any faster opening the data file and then my largest investment account. It was not any faster for any operation. So, the file bloat is not negatively impacting the speed.

As mentioned before, spending accounts are much faster than investment accounts on initial access of the register and when entering transactions. It's interesting to compare running a transaction report for an account for "include all dates" and comparing the time to render the report versus the time to render the register on first open. Quicken caches the register open so second opens are faster. In my production file the report rendering is about 4 times faster than the initial register rendering, so the data access is quick, but the GUI is slow.

In conclusion, Quicken is rather slow when used with a large data file. Until the software is totally rewritten, it will remain that way.

Adding- Quicken's speed is not determined by its ability to query the data in the database but rather its ability/methods used to render the data into a GUI form. This can be seen clearly by testing the speed at which data can be accessed in the Find/Edit window. Use a Find Any Field Exact 0.27. It will search the entire data base table almost instantly no matter how large the database is. But do not try a Find for something with several thousand matches because while you will see the number of matches almost instantly in the bottom right corner indicating it completed the query and has identified responsive transactions, it may take an hour to render the visible results, during which time Quicken cannot be used to perform other functions.

That seems like something the developers could start with. Fix the inefficient rendering methods used to assemble and display the query data.

@markus1957

Bottom line, The OP times are probably the best that can be achieved unless the developers make significant efforts to speed the software up

Thanks for the great info. I agree but that may not happen. I may be one of the lucky ones however: If you are referring to the times listed in the OP's table, my experience is different. All my banking accounts are under a second and the investment accounts are just about a second-ish. My first morning OSU typically completes in 15-20 seconds.

In addition I also use VM for testing and Q it is even faster there. To be fair, the VM is based on 'Tiny11' which is a stripped down Win11 Pro and fewer installed programs.

My Q file is 86MB which I am guessing it is small by most SuperUser standards, 11 connected FIs with 21 accounts. My Internet speed is about 250 down and 150 up average, my 5-year old mid-tier laptop is wifi connected and the farthest from the router in the house.

I have managed to maintain a well balanced performing system by following a few simple rules. Four things that used to slow me down were: MS Office, Acrobat Reader, 3rd party AV, and various Auto-update Auto-run Services. 3rd party AV was the biggest culprit and I tried a few well respected ones, and even uninstalling them didn't improve things. The solution was to reinstall a fresh OS from scratch, installed a minimal 32bit MS Office via a custom script, 32bit Adobe Reader, no 3rd party AVs EVER, and many Auto Services turned off/manual. (I know, 32bit? it made a noticeable positive difference for me!). Finally if I want to install a new program, I evaluate it on a VM first to keep my main system clean.

Mark Knu

My Quicken is slower than **** too….. same slow spinning circle as data is entered.

Galen Gautreaux

My Quicken is super slow now too. This is a very recent problem. I've tried the various recommendations on this site, but nothing is speeding it up.

BKHarry

I've noticed the lag in responsiveness, too, and it is VERY frustrating! I've been a Quicken user for more years than I can count, and I, too, am considering whether I need to try a different product. (Any recommendations??) The developers really need to get on this and figure it out. The license for this product isn't inexpensive, and it should function better than this.

deathrs

I know this is a longtime issue and no real solution for an investment account that has a lot of transactions. When I am in an investment account with 30K plus transactions and enter or edit a transaction in that account. it will take 40 seconds from the time I hit enter until the account is ready for another transaction.

I discovered that if I have a downloaded transaction that did not have a category. It would show up on the "spending" main page as "Uncategorized", even though it is an investment transaction. From the spending page, I can select the individual transaction and add the correct category and hit enter and it is almost instantaneous to accept the transaction. Whereas if I go the Investment account and select the transaction and enter the correct category. It takes the 40 sec delay before it is accepted. Weird…

Galen Gautreaux

My performance problems were caused by Avast. I have added an exception to Avast for my Quicken data file directory, and all is back to normal.

jennie.griner

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20544496#Comment_20544496

I thought investments were the issue too based on all the posts that I'd read, but when I was able to archive out most of my old 401k records (back to like 2015) due to a change in security ID, I expected things to fly, but it made absolutely no difference. Investments are a problem for sure, but they are definitely not the main problem like most of the reports make it seem.

Wernerd

Jennie, I am seeing the exact same thing. I have a fairly robust Windows 11 system with 16G memory and fast access drives. Quicken has never been speedy but over the last 2 months it has become almost unusable unless you have a lot of time and patience. I have gone through all of the suggested fixes and nothing has changed the problem. It would be nice to here from Quicken because based on ChatGPT this is not isolated to you and I. I also plan to start looking for a suitable replacement to Quicken if this doesn't get resolved.

tralfamadore

Using a 6-year-old Lenovo laptop (Yoga C740-15IML Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10510U CPU @ 1 .80GHz) with MS Windows 11 Pro.

I was having slow issues as well, and followed Rocket J Squirrel's suggested hacks here:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7915476/

And it worked wonders. Hopefully it lasts a while.

AlexBo

same issues. After 30!years the software has degenerated into unusable bloat. Accepting each downloaded transaction is a 10-15 second wait. Switching to another account is another 10 second ordeal. It clearly is old inefficient code and the roadmap points to more features but no indication of addressing the current issues. Quicken on Mac was coded from scratch with newer and modern software protocols- it seems much more efficient. Regrettably I am moving away from quicken windows as there is no evidence that this will be fixed anytime soon.

grey_xenon

Another 10 year+ user with 30k+ transactions reporting extreme slowness to do the most basic functions.
Former PC repair tech and I have a custom build monstrously powerful desktop computer so I know what I'm doing generally. I just cannot for the life of me figure out a way to get this thing to run faster. Waiting 5+ seconds to edit each field in the register is so maddening.
If a viable alternative ever comes out (I know, not likely) I will be gone SO FAST.
Totally insane that they will not invest in updating this software to something remotely resembling modernity in terms of speed for what is essentially just some data entry into a database.

Imagine being a Quicken for Windows engineer and looking at yourself in the mirror and being like "I do good work". What a frustrating sh*#show Quicken has become.

Chris_QPW

Totally insane that they will not invest in updating this software to something remotely resembling modernity in terms of speed for what is essentially just some data entry into a database.

Quicken isn't "just some data entry into a database".

People way underestimate all the features that are in Quicken.

I all you need is "some data entry into a database", try finding a database that fits the needs. How about the non-database of Excel or why not even Quicken Windows 2013.

If people wonder why there isn't any real competitors to Quicken Desktop here are the main points in my opinion.

Very large feature set that is hard to recreate.
Online features like transaction aggregation and online bills/bill pay have only a very small amount of third-party service providers and the lack of standardized protocols at financial institutions and billers make maintaining this extremely labor intense and costly.
Customer base is a niche market that is dying, not growing. Online personal finance services are most likely the future, but probably still not a robust of a solution. There is a reason why Intuit and Microsoft got out of this business and why Quicken Inc is such a small company.