Yes, it is possible to install Quickbooks 2002 on Windows 10 64-bit. Here is a step-by-step overview of how to do it. It may also help you install any old software on Windows 10.
Symptoms
- Installation of QuickBooks 2002 succeeds, possibly with errors about fonts, and upon reboot there is an install error: “error extracting support files catastrophic failure”
- QuickBooks opens for a tenth of a second and then closes
- QuickBooks cannot be uninstalled. Error “error extracting support files catastrophic failure”
Installation Overview for QuickBooks 2002 on Windows 10
- CAUTION: Save the \Program Files (x86)\Intuit\QuickBooks\Components\Downloads\ folder if applicable. It contains previously downloaded software auto-updates (if you downloaded them in the past that is). I keep a personal copy stored which I transfer between computers because I don’t believe the updates are on Intuit’s servers anymore.
- If you’ve already got yourself stuck with a bad installation that cannot be simply uninstalled normally, use Revo Uninstaller to remove QuickBooks. Kill the running “qb*” executable(s) in the background and remove the QuickBooks folder from within \Program Files\Intuit (or wherever your Quickbooks files are located). Reboot.
- OK. Now with a clean slate let’s begin the install procedure as follows.
- Temporarily turn OFF User Account Control (set it to the lowest unprotected security setting). Make note of the original setting because you’ll be returning it to normal later. Reboot.
- Copy the QuickBooks 2002 entire installation disk to a folder on your PC.
- Run the installation setup.exe with WinXP SP3 compatibility and administrative privileges.
- Proceed with the installation by choosing CUSTOM. Change the install location from c:\Program Files (x86)\Intuit\ to c:\Intuit\ . The purpose being to choose a folder requiring less security privileges. This step might be optional with UAC turned off. But to save yourself from potential future headaches with this outdated software, I recommend not skipping this. Be kind to yourself.
- Once the install completes and the computer reboots (error free), set the newly installed QuickBooks executable (or shortcut) to compatibility mode WinXP SP3, to run with administrative privileges, and disable DPI scaling which may be trouble later (in my experience).
- Test QuickBooks. Open a company file. It should be working and asking you to register with your serial registration code.
- Run QuickBooks auto updates from the Help menu -> About auto updates. If no files are downloaded, and you knowingly kept a copy from previous installations, restore your \Intuit\QuickBooks\Components\Downloads\ folder from a backup. Then, upon closing QuickBooks, it will notice there are updates available to be installed. Say yes and let these install.
- Test QuickBooks again. It should be working.
- Turn ON User Account Control by setting it back to its previous setting. Reboot.
- Test QuickBooks yet again. And it should be WORKING on WINDOWS 10. Congratulations.
- Specifically for Quickbooks 2002, acquire and install the font Copperplate Gothic Light Regular, which is needed eventually but *might* be optional. I think you may also need Arial Narrow. These missing fonts cause popups that nag the user at various times and font substitutions may occur if you don’t have them installed. If you skip this step, you will run into the nag boxes eventually and they will contain the names of the fonts that are missing.
- The final step. Did this work for you? If you feel like giving back, click my Paypal donate button and donate money to me for saving you hours of frustration and preventing a new software purchase. And you can also click on my “About” page and see bulleted list of ways you can help out by trying free samples of various products. Take care.
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I’m buying REVO portable right off the bat, untried, having seen these explicit instructions. I’m sure we will not fail. I was going nuts trying to clean out a bad installation of Quickbooks Basic 2002 off a Windows 10 Pro 32-bit machine. I am at a loss to know why it went in badly in the first place. I thought the disc might have a “counter” in it. I’ll return to click the amazon link to credit and support your efforts. You have saved us hours of rebuilding a company in another version. Thank you for this page. I am the first to like it.
Thank you so much for your Paypal donation, Sonya. I’m very glad my instructions helped you. 🙂
Justin,
This works ok but the navigatiors do not display properly?
Simon
I’m not experiencing this issue on my end. I would guess it must be an issue with DPI settings on your machine. You can try fiddling around with the Compatibility tab in the Quickbooks shortcut on your desktop and/or changing the DPI settings for your computer to see if it helps. My display is a 1080p resolution with 125% DPI turned on, and I have the high DPI scaling override turned on in the Compatibility section of the QuickBooks shortcut and everything looks good. Hopefully this information helps.
I followed your excellent steps to install my Quickbooks 2002 onto my Windows 10 computer. All seems fine, but I get the message that I need to register the product, with 13 uses left. The Online registration link does not work. I called Intuit to register it and they say they are not able to register my old version even though I have my key code, registration # and S/N. Any thoughts? I feel so close to success. Thx.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ll try to answer your question and I’ll overwrite a bit in case someone comes by needing the extra info. Pardon if I’m a little redundant here.
When I registered QuickBooks 2002 I recall doing so from something like the Help menu at the top, and I believe it was an offline validation of the key that was done mathematically, as long as you had recorded down the Install Key Code, Registration Number, Serial Number, and Group Number. I think you used to have to call Intuit and get them to mathematically generate half these codes for you. If you have all the info written down you can use the phone option and not actually call them. So I would check and see if there’s a way to do so by phone, sometimes called offline validation. If not presented with this option, try disconnecting your internet first. Surely they have an alternative for customers without an internet connection. Many software companies like Adobe offer offline validation like this, even today.
Lastly, if what you are missing is your group number, etc., try finding an Inuit QuickBooks 2002 keygen online that might be able to generate keys for you. Technically these are most often used for software piracy but if you’re just trying to get a mathematical generation of registration info based off of a key that you purchased legally, I really don’t see the problem. Please be aware that keygens are prone to containing viruses so don’t execute one on a sensitive PC. Consider also using a virtual machine or a sandboxing program like Sandboxie to protect yourself. (I have never used Sandboxie and cannot vouch for it.) Another way to get lost keys: If you still have Quickbooks running on an old PC there are some apps that will scrape your windows registry and try to find all your software keys for you, and it might be in there. I think they can also scan a registry file from a recovered hard drive, even if the PC isn’t running. I believe in the past I used one called LicenseCrawler.
I hope this helps.
JR
Justin, thank you so much. After taking your suggestions, and a bit more goofing around, I saw Registration under the pull down File tab. From that, I clicked Phone registration, and entered the registration number I have; and all seems fine. I will be back to you in the new year once I’ve used it a bit, to confirm that all is well. Thanks again. Don
Excellent. I’m glad to hear it.
Hello- I realize this is an older post, but I’m trying to load QB2003 on Win10- just wondered if you could give more detail on how to install the missing fonts you mentioned. I see free version of Copperplate Gothic…online, but how/where do I install so that QB can use them? Thank you for this very helpful post.
1. First I caution anyone looking for fonts online to make sure the files you have are the correct and safe format. These are genuine font file extensions: TrueType (.ttf), OpenType (.otf), TrueType Collection (.ttc), or PostScript Type 1 (.pfb + .pfm). From a font site you should be obtaining a zip file that contains these fonts. If you are required to install software or are asked to download and run an *.exe file, run away. I always recommend showing known file extensions in windows instead of hiding them for this reason.
2. Windows 10 is capable of installing fonts natively. If you have a zip, you must extract it to a folder first. Then you can find the font, right-click on the font, and choose to Install the font. HowToGeek has screenshots to help.
I finally installed Quickbooks 2002 on a Windows 10 computer, following your instructions on this page. The program seems to have installed well. At first, I had some issues, and could not uninstall QB2002. Your web page alerted me to Revo and that did the trick. Thanks.
My next problem is that I cannot restore any of my backup files. I go through all the prompts in the restore dialog box (under the “File” drop-down menu) but when I click on the “Save” box, or on the “Restore” box, nothing happens.
I doubt that my backup files are corrupted because I’ve been backing up QB files for close to 20 years, and have saved all of those backups — spread out on different backup drives. None of them work.
Any ideas? Thanks again.
Hi Paul. I don’t have any experience restoring QuickBooks backups. Because QuickBooks 2002 doesn’t hold the main QBW file in a read lock I have always found it easier to simply backup the main company file routinely, or even keep it in Dropbox to do so, bypassing their backup system entirely. Thus my experience is limited.
Regarding your issue it sounds like the app has a bug since the menu isn’t responding to you. Never the less I will speculate on some things that might apply that could be causing a silent failure:
1. Make sure your Windows 10 doesn’t have a strange DPI setting that’s causing something important in the menu not to show up that you can’t see, which may result in the menu not advancing. I can only imagine.
2. Make sure your backup files and the company file you’re attempting to recover are not located in any folder requiring special permissions. Just like in my guide where I put files in C:\Intuit to avoid weird permission problems, I recommend similar for doing a restore from a backup, if at all applicable.
I’m sorry if this wasn’t helpful.
One reader wrote in to say that the “Quickbooks install folder” has a REBOOT.BAT which does a better job of registering dlls if it is ran as admin. For them it seemed to solve some “nothing happens” behavior running QuickBooks itself. Maybe you will find luck with it on your issue.
Hello. I’m commenting on my own post to share this amazing message I got from reader Bob. Bob ran into more problems than I did and overcame them and wanted to share. Stunning. Thanks Bob for your notes.
The following steps are from Bob and they may be optional for most users. I have not had to perform them so I cannot personally endorse them and thus your mileage may vary.
You are a superhero. You allowed me to move my 2006 QuickBooks (which I really only use to build invoices) to my Windows 10 laptop. Flawless. Enjoy the beer.
Excellent! I’m glad it worked out. Thank you for the kind words and the donation. I will.
Hi Justin,
Wanted to let you know that the ‘reboot.bat’ solved my issues with QB2004 installation, thanks Bob and Justin.
starting QB would just flash and
disappear.
this is my issue. And i have not been able to reslove it following all instruction . interesting enough i can install in window 11 with no problems.
I am trying to locate reboot.bat which mentioned above. but i do not see that in qb2002
I’m afraid I don’t know where that file is located either. Perhaps it is on the disc.
Justin,
I got my quickbooks 2002 installed but it still closes quickly after I open it.
I have followed you insturctions down to #8 and that is where I am stuck.
Quickbook pro 2002 running in windows 10. Problem with help file not running any ideas ? When I click on help menu button sends you to a microsoft site and says help not supported. Rest of program runs fine under windows 10. When I ran program under windows xp when i clicked on help button it showed all help topics etc.
Thanks
I tested this out on my side. The first Help menu option works fine and takes me to the Help & Support Center. The second menu option called the “Help Index” takes me to the same site you saw about Windows Help no longer being supported. If you scroll down on this page, it appears to offer you a solution. You apparently can install the legacy Windows Help file handler via the links at the bottom—it just doesn’t come with Windows 10 automatically.
I successfully installed QB2002 on a W10 machine. It is running okay but the machine is airgapped. There are some screens which don’t load or throw a runtime error “0”. Any ideas?
I’ve never personally encountered a runtime error “0”. Google seems to suggest this happens when certain files are corrupted, but I am unsure if this means Quickbooks or Windows in general. If it is Windows, there are command you can run to have Windows attempt to repair itself: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e
Perhaps you need to remove the air gap and allow the Windows machine to perform all of its Windows Updates?
Hello, I just purchased a laptop with Windows 11. Should I follow these same instructions to install Quickbooks 2002? Also, where can I find a download for QB 2002 as my new laptop does not have a cd drive? Thank you!
I’ve not tested it on Windows 11 at the time of this writing, but the installation steps should be no different. I don’t have a download for QB 2002, but you can purchase an external DVD drive that connects via USB. Once you have it connected, you can either install it, or use an app like ImgBurn to make a backup copy of the disk (save an image of it) that you can keep on your computer digitally. A disc image can be “mounted” and used as if you inserted the disc, any time in the future.