By Ruaan de Swardt

With technology being what it is – challenges do present themselves in the life of the average QuickBooks user.  In this edition we’ll be taking a peek underneath the bonnet to see what makes QuickBooks run.

If you’re anything like me you’ll have a hard time telling the difference between a coil and carburettor when asked to look under the bonnet of a car. As a result, I trust that my car will run despite my lack of mechanical insight. Similarly we expect QuickBooks to run without knowing how everything fits together… until something goes wrong that is! Having a basic understanding of all the QuickBooks ‘parts’ may not only get you out of sticky troubleshooting situations, but give you the confidence you need to stay on the road.

4 vital QuickBooks components and the roles they play

QuickBooks database (Sybase Sequel Anywhere) needs the following components to work optimally.

Errors around QuickBooks aborting, not printing or crashing are usually caused by one of the following components that got damaged or are missing.

Microsoft .Net

.NET is a framework component Microsoft uses to interface programs through Windows.

QuickBooks uses .NET for many areas of the program. Different versions of .NET are used for different releases of QuickBooks. Sometimes, .NET framework can become corrupted, which may prevent QuickBooks from installing, opening correctly, or functioning properly

It creates common ground for packages written in Visual Basic & C++ (C++ is the ‘language’ QuickBooks is written in) and various operating systems.

Typical QuickBooks Error codes associated with .NET are: 1603, 1642, 1904, 1935, and 1722

Microsoft Visual C++

The Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package contains library files required to run applications developed with Visual C++, the language in which QuickBooks was written.

If a computer does not have the correct version of Visual C++ installed, QuickBooks 2007 and later versions will install it automatically.

Typical Visual C++ errors in QuickBooks:

• Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error!
• Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error! Program: C:Program FilesIntuitQuickBooks [Version]qbw32.exe. R6025 – pure virtual function call

XPS Document Writer

• QuickBooks 2012 and later requires the XPS services to be enabled for PDF related functions to work correctly.
• XPS Doc writer comes pre-installed on Windows 7/8 machines and need to be reinstalled in the event of it being deleted.
• Sometimes the XPS Document writer needs repairing due to damage.

MSXML

According to Microsoft, Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) is a set of services that allows applications written in Script, VBScript, and Microsoft development tools to build Windows-native XML-based applications.

What does this mean? First, you need to understand what XML is. XML is an almost universally supported way of exchanging documents and data across applications and platforms. In other words, it’s a way of organising information so you can view data easier. However, this only applies to you viewing the data in a Notepad or browser window, not for applications to access them in the background. A good example is how you can open the qbregistration.dat file in Notepad and see the data. Without MSXML, QuickBooks cannot read it.

Microsoft has provided a way to interpret the data between the XML document (e.g., qbregistration.dat) and the application (QuickBooks). MSXML reads the XML data in qbregistration.dat and relays it back to QuickBooks.

Currently, various versions of MSXML are in use:

• MSXML
• MSXML 3.0
• MSXML 4.0 (All versions of QuickBooks use this version of MSXML)
• MSXML 6.0

Typical errors relating to MSXML 4.0

• Make sure MSXML 4 has been installed on your system correctly
• QuickBooks had a problem accessing this registration file. Make sure MSXML 4 is installed correctly:
  C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataCOMMON FILESIntuitQuickBooksQBRegistration.dat
• An unrecoverable error has occurred. Exception MSXML could not co-create instance.
• The install process stays at “Installing MSXML 4.0” and does not continue.

QuickBooks Component Repair tool

The QuickBooks component repair tool is not new to the technical newsletter arena. You may recall seeing it in the May 2014 edition I but think it’s worth repeating.

It fixes most of the above mentioned issues with the exception of XPS Document Writer (which can be addressed using QuickBooks PDF Fix).

Missed last month’s technical newsletter? Summary of what was covered:

QuickBooks is compatible with Terminal Server

QuickBooks is not a flat file

QuickBooks Toolkit

Windows compatibility

Third Party Integration

Microsoft Outlook compatibility

Quick Payroll Ver 1.2.43

Hosting QuickBooks on Cloud