Hi Randy

I can understand your frustrations, but it isn't just the updates. I have
never been one to allow anything to touch my files that I am not
controlling. I didn't download automatic update, I didn't download
financial data from banks, credit cards etc. I quit using passport a couple
of years ago. The only on line activity I had was MSN Bill pay.......that
used from within money, and Portfolio Update............and I could never
stabilize Money. Loved the program, but it became very frustrating for me.

What really amazes me right now is that since I installed Quicken and
started using it (I still keep Money up to date), I haven't Money crash on
me at all. It has been about a week now since it crashed which for me is my
second longest period of time without a crash. It is almost like Quicken is
intimidating it to behave.............

Bob
"RandyO" <RandyO[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8C797294-DD48-40F1-B459-6D2F1E674F86[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I'll chime in - I have been a MS Money user since back when it had numbers
like MS Money 10 instead of years like Money 2000 and all worked flawlessly
until recently. I was part of the Passport fiasco a few months ago that had
us all locked up and found nothing on the MS Support page for days. I tried
Money 2005 and found many problems and program changes not for the better. I
had kept using 2004 and returned to it only to have the new update that
automatically download cause MS Money to close whenever the stocks updated as
they were on my home page and MS Support still has nothing talking of this
problem. In fact a "Top 10 topics" shows a subject of Money 2003, 2004 won't
update stocks but when you click on it, it says the topic is not available.
I would hope there are enough Money users that Microsoft is quickly aware of
these problems, realizes that they are caused by their updates and provides a
better problem resolution process than me having to hunt for other users to
help identify and resolve the problems. I live in Redmond in the shadow of
Microsoft and I'm heading over to Quicken - I'm tired of this.

"scottwilliams33" wrote:

- quote -

Thanks both of you for your feedback.

It turns out my file was not corrupt after all. Basically from what I can
tell, with the latest version that was pushed to me automatically, there is
some kind of bug in the Investment Summary on the Money Home page of Money,
that would crash, or hang my system wheh entering Money. I had to open a new
file, then turn off the home page as the first page that opens, then remove
the Investment Summary from the Home page.

Once I did this, it appears that all the Money files look fine (and I have a
lot of them because I was running the salvage utility over and over).

So all is better except Microsoft pushed an "update" to their program that
started this whole thing, that obviously had a bug in it, that kept me from
using the program with my data. My frusturation is that I almost had to
figure this out by myself (I found this information after searching this site
many times, and running salvage many times.) I GUARANTEE that many other are
having this problem as I type this, and are runnign salvage over and over, or
saying "forget it" and giving up, or switching to Quicken which I was about 7
minutes away from doing. This and all bugs should be clearly defined to users
(and the workarounds) so we do not waste our time trying to fix it ourselves.
As far as this issue, I have documented it on this board in several places
with the exact fix. I hope it helps someone else not waste many hours of
their time as I did.

Scott

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

As noted before, I've done that and noted that more "corruption" threads
show up in mpm than in acsfq. As noted before, I recognize that many M users
occasionally see corruption problems.

"Arge" <bigbc37(nospam)[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23MA4HTZ8EHA.3124[at]TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Hi Dick

As a suggestion just take a look at alt.comp.software.financial.quicken and
see how many post you see talking about corruption and compare it with what
you see here.

I have only been looking at that newsgroup for a couple of weeks now, and I
do not recall seeing the word "corruption". It may be a big word tomorrow,
but not today and as I mentioned I am using the same "corrupted" Money file
in Quicken and so far (knock on wood), it has been flawless.

Bob


"Arge" <bigbc37(nospam)[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%236%23$IOZ8EHA.1260[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Probably because I stuck with it longer, and tried to share it my
experiences with others who were having similar problems

I realize that more people using it without problems then those having
problems and I wish I could have been one of those.

As you and Microsoft advised me over a year ago........I probably should
have tried another software, but I really believed I could resolve the
problems. I can keep it running, but as much as I hate to admit it, it was
starting to get to me.

Is there something in my environment, system or what ever causing the
problem.........I am sure there is.

As far as pointing to others having these problems, I will just remind you
to review your own response to me a couple of years ago when you said you
never realized the severity of the corruption problem that so many users of
Money were having until you did a google search. You rationalized the
results at the time on a comparison of how many money vs quicken complaints
and based on the amount of users (of which there are many more quicken
users), you also felt that money had a problem. Anyway I am not trying to
rationalize which product is better.......I am just trying to share my
experiences and I have had them, with others who are thinking about
switching.

I still prefer Money, but for me it just doesn't work.......and I am also
trying to let those reading my posts to know that I am not a novice when it
comes to computers.

Again Dick I appreciate all of the advise you have given me the past couple
of years, and between you and Cal I learned a lot about Money. However I
still can't (I am not an novice) get it work as it was designed. In my
opinion I have a software that Money just doesn't like as with the exception
of the motherboard I have changed ever piece of hardware on my system to
assure that it was not hardware causing the problem. Actually I guess since
I have these problems on a couple of my systems, then I have tired it on a
different motherboard as well.

Bob
"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:uOY359U8EHA.2608[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

That is my entire comment.

I have certainly noticed that q=104 gets lots of posting--I post it
frequently in reply. There is no doubt this happens to users. Only you have
reported this problem occurring monthly. Only you have reported a need to
run the repair tools multiple times a day.

I welcome links pointing to threads from other posters to prove me wrong.

"Arge" <bigbc37(nospam)[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OFHiQFT8EHA.2804[at]TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Hi Dick

I don't disagree with you often and I don't know to what extent that others
have had these problems, but many people post that they are having very
similar problems but maybe not to the same degree. I have noticed since the
stories*.gif fix came up it hasn't been as many as before the fix.

Bob


"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:u1P%238QR8EHA.3336[at]TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I understand Bob is skeptical of this, but he is the only poster in the
newsgroup reporting this degree of repetitive problem. (Maybe tens of
thousands of users have it and never make it here or give up sooner.) Some
of us go back more than a decade and have only resorted to the repair tools
once or twice.

"Arge" <bigbc37(nospam)[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OR4JuKR8EHA.2192[at]TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
- quote -

HI Arm

I do appreciate your opinion, but I have been using financial software for
quite a few years. I have never said that Quicken does not have a
corruption problem.........although in the 10 years I used it prior to
switching to Money, I never had a corruption problem.......The product
worked flawlessly for me. I did not, and still do not, like the Intuit does
business so I finally switched over to Money. I continued professionally
installing and teaching people how to use Quickbooks, but would not allow
any Intuit products on my personal systems. I really don't know how the
validate system works in Quicken because I have never had to use it, however
I am very familiar with the way the Salvage utilities under Money works
since for two and 1/2 years I have probably averaged 3 times per day using
Money's Salvage utilities. I don't think the salvage utilities in Money
2003 did anything at all, if it did I didn't see it and Money 2004 seems a
little better. At lease I get some results back as to what it fixed.I know
many of Money's tech support by first name and have started over with money
six or seven times and each time within a month I would start having
corruption problems. I finally decided to just keep using the salvage
utilities rather than starting over, but it gets old after awhile. I went
for several months without having to repair it often after Cal posted about
the stories1 & 2.gif and thought the problem was resolved.....but it is not.

As far as backups, I had until I just recently deleted them a backup with a
different name for every day for 2 1/2 years. In addition to that I backed
up to floppy after each use using a 7 day set of diskettes. I also have
backups on CDRW, ZIP drives and yes even my network drives. I did quit
using the network drives, zip drive and cdrw's a year ago. I totally agree
you can not backup to often as my backups keep my running many many many
times.

I am not trying to sell Quicken, but I will continue advising those that are
having similar problems of my situation and that I finally had to give up.

I am not an average user. I build computers, networks and manage them. I
repair them and do a lot of advising on many different softwares. I was
involved with Quickbooks for several years and handled all the clients for a
local CPA that used quickbooks.

Now as far as my feelings go, I would love to stay with money as I love the
ease of use, the appearance and yes the price, the support, this newsgroup
and MSN bill pay fees. I do not like nor support Intuit, but I got tired
of the corruption.

Last but not lease, I used the conversion tools on Quicken's web site and am
not using the same corrupted file I was using in Money. The only
difference after making some adjustments is I no longer have to run the
Salvage utility every time I open Quicken up. I have only been using Qucken
again now for a few days so it may go belly up on me next week, but right
now it is very stable.

Bob


"Art McClinton" <art[at]nova.org> wrote in message
news:L0ZBd.11745$622.2207[at]lakeread02...
- quote -

I agree with you that software products should be written such that they
protect against corrupt file inputs. Both Money and Quicken fail in
this situation. Data files can get corrupted by many processes, easiest
of which is a power failure or user abort at the wrong time. I do not
however think that Money is any more open to such failures than Quicken.
I have helped my Mom, a 10 year quicken user, fix corrupt files and
recover using her backups on many occasions.

I have found the Salvage function, when needed under Money to be
superior to what is available under Quicken.

I do however highly recommend that users keep backup files, and rotate
off line files such that over writing them with newer versions will not
wipe out a good backup file prior to determining that a file got
corrupted during this usage.

Art

Arge wrote:
- quote -

Hi Scott

First of all since Microsoft really doesn't pay much attention to this
newsgroup, I don't think you threats to stop spending $80 a year is going to
intimidate anyone into resolving your problems.

I used quicken for approximately 10 years and due to Intuits was of doing
business, I switched to Money and was very pleased with the way the product
looked and the ease of use. I found it very superior in appearance to
Quicken. However, in the 10 years I used Quicken I had never heard the
phrase "corruption", which has become a very common word in my vocabulary
since switching to Money. I have been using Money for about 2 1/2 years and
have started over (since converting my original quicken file was a total
disaster) about 6 times and the longest I ever went without corruption was a
month until Cal Learner posted the fix of removing the stories1 and
stories2.gif's. After I removed them I went about 4 months with minimal
problems. I then downloaded the trial version of Money 2005, tried it for a
couple of days (still ran 2004) and then removed it. I have had nothing but
corruption problems in Money 2004 since. In the past 2 years I have
(without exaggeration), ran various versions and phases of the salvage
utilities close to 1,000 times. I was insistent on making it work and am
far from being an amateur with computers and financial softwares. I have
finally decided to go back to quicken (as much as I dislike Intuit), and
converted the same "corrupted" Money file and it is running flawlessly so
far in Quicken. I still prefer the way Money looks, but the stability of
Quicken by far overshadows Money which (I know Dick Watson will disagree
with me on) in my opinion is the most unstable software ever produced. It
works fine for more users than it works bad for, but for those it doesn't
work right for....give it up. I am not a Microsoft basher and usually
support their products but for me.....Money is a joke.

Bob
"scottwilliams33" <scottwilliams33[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:255C973C-8210-4105-9C94-C74A2DA88D36[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Hello,

I am having the problem with Money 2005 shuting down right after opening my
data file. I am a long time LISCENSED user of this program (5 yrs). I have
tied everything including restore from an older file (last month), playing
catch up by spending 5 hours reimporting and rekeying (I track everything
with Money), and then I get the same problem.

I am going to wait one week to see if anyone gives me any input on how to
fix this problem. Then this liscensed for 5 years user (at 80 bucks a year *
5 years) will go but Quicken and use that instead forever never to return to
Money. This has to be a bug that they have to know about. Please someone
from Microsoft contact me to fix this.

I noticed some real weird stuff. Like when I run the salvage utility the
file INCREASES by 5 MB. I even tried archiving old data (everything older
than Jan 1 2004, and the file got bigger (by 2MB-Should'nt it get smaller?).

I am an IT guy, no spyware, all Win2K patched kept up to date on machine. I
even tried another machine and got the same results. My file sizes range from
10 to 18MB (depending on acrhiving and salvaging). I get no error messages
anywhere that I can see. Just Money shuts down after I get a glimpse of my
data.

Last chance before I move it all to Quicken! If I have to start over, I will
not do it with this product unless I get some help.

Thanks
Scott