QuickBooks runs very slowly

I use Parallels to access a QuickBooks 2004 Pro file on a Windows server. Parallels worked great when I first got my Mac a little over a year ago. Recently, QuickBooks has been running very slowly. It seems to hang up for long period (as much as a minute) then act normally for a command or two, then it freezes up again. I am running Windows XP SP3, and Parallels 3.0 build 5608.

The only change that I can think about between the time when QuickBooks 2004 worked fine and today is that I loaded QuickBooks 2008 Pro on my computer to access another client's file. That program does not work correctly. I can only open a database on the server if a copy of QuickBooks 2008 on the server is running the same file. Otherwise, I get an error message.

I can live without QuickBooks 2008 if necessary, but I really need to get the 2004 Pro version working again. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

About QuickBooks freeze, I suppose some antivirus may cause this - please try to disable them both on server and Parallels.
As for error, it is hard to say what caused it, may be Intuit support can bring some light on it

 

Intuit support sucks on these types of issues. They do not use or test in a parallels environment, plus they always want to charge you to talk to them. John's suggestion about disabling anti virus product to see if problem goes away is a good start. If it does solve your issue great. Let us know which anti virus you are using. I use quickbooks pro 2006 with no issues, we even have a XP/Parallels server with quickbooks multi user enabled that the other Macs running xp/parallels sessions connect too fine.

 

I tried several QuickBooks products (including Premier edition 2008), but it is for testing.
Only suggestion I can give here, is to perform VM periodical backup
But constantly I am trying to use Mac OS edition (as for all other applications )

 

Quickbooks Premier multi-user slow and frequently crashes

I have 4 computers which all use Parallels and each computer has Quickbooks on it. The company file is on an iMac and Quickbooks runs well on it. It is slow sometimes but rarely crashes. The other computers have major Quickbooks issues. They frequently get an error message and they get kicked out of the program. The message indicates that the network connection was lost. I have disabled all virus software and turned off firewalls. This seems to have helped but they are still experience the problem more than we would like. Interestingly the other iMac does not have nearly as much problem with Quickbooks as the 2 laptops. Intuit says it is not a Quickbooks problem. Can you give me any idea of what to try next? 2 of the computers are running Tiger and 2 are Leopard. I thought of upgrading all of them to Leopard but the computer with the worst problem with Quickbooks is running Leopard.

 

Try to set Bridged networking for problem VMs

 

Ethernet

They are all set to bridged ethernet already.

 

What version of Quickbooks do you have? I don't have a solution, I just want to know if it is a newer version. The Office I support uses 2004(maybe 2003, I can't remember). They sometimes lose the network connection, but other than that the application is as speedy with Parallels hosting and accesses as it is was with the native PC's hosting and accesses. This office has only recently converted to Apple MAC solutions.

 

I am using Quickbooks Premier 2007 for Manufacturing. I am using the same iMac that you are,iMAC 20" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo except I only have 3 gb of Ram. The other computers are an iMac 2.16 ghz intel core 2 duo and the other 2 are macbooks. We've never used PCs so I can't compare performance but we lose network connection constantly everyday. I say that but there are occasional good days where the others are only booted a few times in a day. Other times it is so bad the program is unusable.

 

Any firewall is there?
Any custom network configuration for those Macs (VLAN etc)?

 

I turned off the Windows Firewalls and the Virus protection software but the problem continues. I have the computers networked with ethernet cables. The DSL box that bellsouth gave us is also a router so all the computers either connect to the dsl modem or to a switch and then to the modem. The laptop that has the most problems is directly connected to the dsl modem. I don't know what custom network configurations are, I just plug in the cables and they connect.

 

QB Pro 2008 is fine here

QuickBooks Pro 2008 has been running fine for me since spring, when I got Parallels. The only difference in speed between my native XP system is on startup: there is a several second delay after launching QB before I am prompted to choose a company.

QB does check the network for any other machines that might be running QB with the same license number to make sure that you are not trying to use the same license multiple times (unless it is a network license). So, I'm guessing that might be the startup delay.

I am accessing my QB data from a folder on the Mac side via the .psf (parallels shared folders) share - so that TimeMachine backs the data up for me.

I have bridged networking, and in Parallels Tools have the box checked for 'Enabled' for the parallels network driver.

System has been rock steady. I rarely shut down or reboot XP - just quit Parallels - with preference set to suspend XP.

I am using Windows Live OneCare for my firewall/antivirus since it comes free (up to 3 machines) with my DSL provider. No special firewall settings.

Karl

 

> am accessing my QB data from a folder on the Mac side via the .psf (parallels shared folders) share - so that TimeMachine backs the data up for me.

Are you opening you company files in "Multi User" mode?

 

No. Single user. (Multi-user is not checked in the Open dialog.)

 

I suppose the problem may be in fact that Mac connected to DSL modem, not directly to LAN.
Some settings on router may limit connectivity etc, try to plug in Mac to LAN directly

 

John wrote:
>I suppose the problem may be in fact that Mac connected to DSL modem, not directly to LAN.
>Some settings on router may limit connectivity etc, try to plug in Mac to LAN directly
Let me help dispel that thought.

The Office I am supporting has three different brands of routers and a Apple Time Capsule. No combination of routers solved the network connection lost issue with Quickbooks/Parallels. There was no discernible improvement or impairment with wired or wireless connections or with any other combinations that were tried. Since part of the Office upgrade was to include automatic backups of the computer files, a Time Capsule was purchased(I privately hoped the Quickbooks issue would go away). As an experiment I had the PC Server wired to the Time Capsule and a Mac Book Pro also connected to the Time Capsule, this did not solve the Quickbooks/Parallels connection lost issue.

Before all of this, that office was 100% Windows/PC's with no problems. The three brands of routers in use and the connection topology was consistent and did not change as the windows pc's were replaced by various MAC's over the course of 8 months. The PC Server that hosted the Quickbook company files was the last system to be obsoleted, and the Quickbook company files were finally moved to a iMac/Parallels system. Yet even before the company files were moved off the Windows PC/Server, the Parallels/Quickbooks clients would lose connections. The legacy PC's that were still accessing quickbooks had no problems.

So I see no correlation with connection issues having anything to do with the original hardware at this office, and only has something to do with the move to Parallels.

It would be nice if this could be solved, but it probably is low on the list of priorities that development has been tasked with. I will be doing a test this coming weekend using Virtualbox and see if the Quickbooks lost connection issue changes with the different virtualization product.

 

Ok, let me know the results

 

A simple test with two mac's using xp under virtualbox 2.0.4 seemed to run fine with no loss of a network connection. I only had 2 hours of test, most of the day was used up installing windows and quickbooks. I will monitor over the coming week to see if these systems continue to be trouble free.

 

Believe me or not, this VB version 2.04 fully crashed Mac OS Server installation.
I tried to recover it, but in the end I had to reinstall Mac OS

 

I have removed all of Parallels on the test systems and rebooted before I installed Virtualbox.