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Performance and Program Errors Wiki How to troubleshoot program errors Your QuickBooks has just crashed with some long error code. What do you do now? If there is a send/don’t send button, go ahead and click send. Next thing we need to do is make the crash happen again. It is difficult to troubleshoot intermittent errors. If we can’t get the error to happen again, then we have very little chance of identifying the root cause. If the crash happens regularly, but we haven’t figured out how to recreate it at will, then the best recourse is to keep a log of when it happens. Include details about exactly what you were doing when the crash occurred. You’ll be able to use all of the troubleshooting steps in this document, but it will take longer. Every time you test a root cause hypothesis, you’ll need to wait and see if the problem stops. For instance, if the crash happens seemingly randomly once a day, you’ll need to wait a day after you change something to see if the crash stops. If the crash or error can be made to happen at will, then your root cause testing can be much faster. How do you figure out how to make the error happen at will? The best way to do this is to do exactly what you were doing the first time it happened. If the error never happens again, then chalk it up to a computer glitch. Now that you have a repeatable problem, write down the error code. Write it down word for word, including all numbers and codes. Taking a screenshot is best. Hit Ctrl-Print Screen, and paste it into a Word document. The next step is to see if this is a known issue. A known issue means that someone has already figured out what causes your error, and has fixed it. How do you find out if this is the case? Search using your specific error code in the following three places: http://quickbooks.com/support - this is the KnowledgeBase search, which contains all of the articles we have about known issues. http://community.intuit.com/ – this is the online community. Sometimes this is the first place a fix is found and documented. http://google.com – sometimes fixes are documented on non-Intuit sites. If you find the answer, follow the directions and see if that resolves your issue. If not, continue on with the next steps. Even if you don’t find anything about your error code, go ahead and make sure your computer and all the computers on your network have the most recent QuickBooks patch. Remember to update the server as well. If this is not a known issue, and patching to the latest release doesn’t help, write down the exact steps you take to get the problem to happen. Include as much detail as possible, as well as details about your computer and your network. The more detail we have, the better chance we have to identify what is causing the problem. Data The next step is to determine if the problem is specific to your data file or not. Why does this matter? If the problem is specific to your file, then we know that either your file is damaged and needs to be fixed, or the problem can only be reproduced with some specific configuration in your file. Either way, this information is critical to process. Try repeating the steps to cause the crash in a sample file, or a new test file that you create. If you can get it to happen again in the new file, then skip forward a few paragraphs to the section on System. If you can’t get the problem to happen in your file, then it might be a data problem. Run a Verify on the file. If the Verify finds a problem, it will tell you to do a Rebuild. Go ahead with the Rebuild and run another Verify. If the second Verify still indicates a problem, find the qbwin.log file and open it up in Notepad. If it mentions any problems, try finding the offending transaction, deleting it, and re-entering it. Again, try searching for any errors you find detailed in the qbwin.log file in the 3 areas mentioned above. If you are unable to fix the error detailed in the qbwin.log file, you can either contact tech support or post on the community site at https://community.intuit.com. This Knowledge Base article has more in depth information on how to diagnose and repair data damage. If the damage can’t be fixed over the phone, then you have two options:
If you are able to reproduce your problem in a different file, this still might be an issue with your particular system or computer. Try the same procedure to reproduce the problem on another computer. If you can still get it to happen, try again on another network, or try putting the data file on a different server. If it only happens on your system or your computer, then there is something about your system or computer that is interfering. First, make sure you have everything setup in the recommended manner: http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/networking/ If that doesn’t help, then try removing or replacing pieces of your network or computer setup until you find the problem. For instance, try booting into Safe Mode, try it with all the security software turned off or uninstalled. Make guesses as to what is causing the problem and test each one out. If you eliminate something on your network and the error goes away, then you know that you’ve found the root cause. Application defects Once you know the problem happens in your file, in another file, and on another completely different system, we know that this is a defect in the software. At this point, you can call tech support or post on the community website with the details of your troubleshooting. Provide detailed instructions on how to reproduce the problem. We need to be able to reproduce the problem in-house so that we can find a fix. Why is it important to provide all the details of your troubleshooting steps? Because 90% of the time when someone says they’ve tried everything, they’ve missed something. In going over the whole problem with a fresh set of eyes, we make sure that all the steps were done right. Maybe you didn’t search the database with the right keywords. Maybe you forgot to try reproducing the problem on another computer. Maybe you didn’t reboot. Now that we can reproduce the problem, it will be entered in our QuickBooks issues database. Then it will be evaluated for severity and scope. People often assume that once the issue has been identified that the fix can happen very quickly. When changing code in software as large and complex as QuickBooks, we have to be very careful about changing anything. By fixing one problem, we might be creating another. This means that each bug fix has to be tested thoroughly to make sure it doesn’t cause an issue elsewhere. New patches are issued on a regular schedule and each includes a list of the problems it fixes. Once your issue has been evaluated, a new KnowledgeBase article will be created. You can look that article up and enter your email address to be notified when there is a patch that resolves the issue. Still stuck? Call tech support, post a question on the community site, or hire a pro to help you: http://community.intuit.com/quickbooks/local_help Compiled by Nic Tolstoshev |
