Last last year hubby decided to try a little subversion to get the household on all mac machines. (He bought me a mac book for my birthday – better than a toaster oven i guess)

My main sticking point was/is quicken. The version for the mac is not the same and file must be “converted”.

So – hell no, i wont go!

Hubby decided he could solve that – so he also installed Parallels on my fancy new machine, and Windows XP. So i could be using my mac, but also running a mini windows world within it.

When I originally attempted to run windows kept crapping out and wouldn’t acknowledge that the version i had installed was valid. I didn’t have 3 hours to sit on the phone with India to sort it out, and when I did I never managed to have my code with me.

Finally I decided it was time – I was working from home for the afternoon – so i had everything i needed in place to get this done. And wouldn’t you know it – windows worked, register and ran as it should. Ok, yeah!

Next step – install quicken.

All holy hell breaks loose. I open quicken, restore my quicken file and it looks good. I close the file to make sure it all worked well – and BAM! Quicken crashes and can’t recover…  I try this a couple more times, different files, new back ups, restores, open from a local directory, un-install, re-install, un-install Parallels, re-install Pallels, re-install Quicken… Nope. Sigh… “See sweetie, this is why I still have my dell”

Well that set him off, he was bound and determined to make this thing work so he could remove the offending PC from our network!

He found the following:

1> Uninstall Parallels Tools and install it again.

2> Disable the antivirus which you are using.

3> Now, insert your Quicken CD-ROM. If you are prompted to install Quicken, click No or Cancel.

4> Click the Start button and select Computer.

5> Right-click the CD-ROM drive that contains the Quicken program CD and select Explore.

6> Right-click the install.exe file and select Run as Administrator. (If you are using a downloaded version of Quicken, locate the Quicken download file and right-click this file, and select Run as Administrator) If you receive a warning about unauthorized access, click Allow.

7> If you are prompted for your Administrator password, enter the password. If you did not establish an Administrator password when you installed Windows Vista, click Continue.

8> Follow the on-screen prompts to install Quicken.

9> When prompted to update the program during the installation process, click Update Now to install the latest updates.

Important Note: If the installation appears to stall, do not cancel the installation or End Task using the Windows Task Manager. Installation may take up to 2 hours to complete depending on the amount of RAM installed and other system configuration settings.

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And Damn skippy if it didn’t work!!

I found out the admin account had no password- so i had to fix that. Grumble. Also found out that there was no limit to the amount of times you could attempt to login if that password had never been set up! Nice security! Although good cause i didn’t have many other options!

It did not have an extended install delay. And it works a-ok!

I still have the DELL and i cringe every time i open Quicken – but so far so good!

Tags: mac and parallels and quicken