THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

Got a call tonight about having Quickbooks go on a Terminal server and first off I should state... this is not supported by QB.  You are 'supposed' to buy QB Enterprise... that said..there's a link about QB on TS.  Remember to get Quickbooks to run without local admin or power user rights on the local XP machine [non LUA] you have to do some more tweakage.

Applications : QuickBooks

The official statement from Intuit is that running QuickBooks 2003 in a Terminal Server session is not supported. Read the details in Microsoft Terminal Server functionality for QuickBooks

Notwithstanding the above, users in the terminal services newsgroups have reported that you can make QuickBooks available in a TS environment, if you give the users some extra privileges. Here are the steps:

• perform a normal installation of QuickBooks (in install mode!)
• reboot
• enter install mode again (change user /install), start QuickBooks and activate it by entering the registration code (this is a crucial step, and must be performed immediately following the reboot
• go back to execute mode (change user /execute)
• copy the %systemroot%\Intuit folder into each users %userprofile%\Windows folder
• create a Quickbooks Users group
• add your users to this group
• give the group Full Control to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intuit\QuickBooksRegistration
• give the group Full Control to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.QPG
• give the group Full Control to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\obja.obja
• give the group Full Control to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Quickbooks.application - QB Premier 2004 only?
• give the group Modify rights to the %Program Files%\Intuit folder
• give the group Modify rights to the %Program Files%\Common Files\Intuit folder

Printing issues

Make sure that clients use short names for their local printers if they need to print to a redirected local printer. Quickbooks cannot handle long printer names.
It's also important WHEN the driver was installed. Apparently QuickBooks only sees so many drivers in the registry, so if you installed 16 printer drivers and the 17th was the one you need auto-created, QuickBooks won't see it.

Misc. issues

• 123869 - Message: "An ActiveX control on this page is not safe" or QuickBooks Centers are blank

Further reading:

• 320185 - HOW TO: Use the CHANGE USER Command to Switch to Install Mode in Windows
• 186498 - Terminal Server Application Integration Information

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the License Agreement for QuickBooks. You should check your License Agreement with Intuit to see if running QuickBooks on a Terminal Server is a violation or not.

Update

QuickBooks 2005 Enterprise Solutions does support Terminal Services! Check QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions: Features and Benefits for details.

After installation, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the QBES shortcut
2. Chose properties
3. Go to the Compatibility tab
4. Put a checkmark in the box labeled "Allow Non-Administrators to Run This Program"
5. Apply and save

And yes...it REALLY wants Admin unless you hack it...