Directly load your IDB file from Quicken Home Inventory on any 64 bit Windows system. It works on 32 bit as well, of course. Today, a new version of Attic Manager is released, version 3.00. This version is able to load data directly from IDB files, there is no need to install any additional software. You don’t even have to have Quicken installed. This also means that you can run this option on 64 bit Windows 7 for example, or even on Linux.

Attic Manager can also load the inventory data from QHI and MDF files. QHI files are also loaded without any additional software.

For MDF files you need to have Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition installed. This is a freeware from Microsoft that comes with QHIM, so if you already have Quicken installed on the same computer, you don’t need to install anything.

In any case, Attic Manager is now unique software on the market, being able to load all Quicken Home Inventory formats and allowing you to keep track of your items on any PC.

There are even hints of Mac version coming soon.

If you are looking for a way to use all the data you have already entered on Windows 7 box, you came to the right place. Although the short answer is: “you really can’t do that with QHI”, there is an easy solution to this problem…

There is a nice inexpensive replacement called Attic Manager, which is able to load data from QHI even on Windows 7 computer without Quicken instalation.

It can load locations, categories, items and images (photos) of items.

Most importantly, it runs on all modern operating systems including Windows 7 and various Linux distributions.

If you don’t have access to your old copy of QHI or Quicken Classic, it does not really matter, because Attic Manager can load the data directly from QHI database.

P.S. If you decide to buy it, use the coupon code CNVRT4 to get 40% discount off the price.

I had a client’s machine installed with Windows 7 and some free hard disk space for Linux. I decided not to install the Linux boot loader because:

• I did not have Windows install/rescue CD at hand
• in case something goes wrong I could not boot into Windows
• I had some experience in the past with Windows XP where it simply did not work

Since re-installing Windows or even fixing Windows if it became unbootable was not an option, I decided to play safe: use Windows’ boot loader to boot up Linux.

I did this in past with Windows XP. Basically, you save Linux boot loader into some file (it’s only 512 bytes) and then tell Windows’ boot loader to load it. On WindowsXP this means editing boot.ini file in C:. To create the linux boot loader file, install linux boot loader into root partition (for example, with LILO, if you installed Linux in /dev/sda4, then lilo.conf should read boot=/dev/sda4) and then read the first sector into a file:

dd if=/dev/sda4 of=linux.boot bs=512 count=1

This will create file named linux.boot which you need to copy to C:\ disk of your Windows machine (use the USB stick or network for this).

On Windows7 there is no boot.ini, you have to use Microsoft’s tool, named BCDEdit. BCD stands for Boot Configuration Data. You need to run BCDedit as administrator. Hit the Start button, then go to All programs and then to Accessories. Right-click the Command prompt and “Run as administrator”.

Now, we need to enter a couple of commands:

bcdedit /create /d "Linux" /application BOOTSECTOR

If will show something like

The entry {12345678-0000-1111-9999-112233445566} was successfully created.

That number is a unique identifier for boot menu entry. You need to use it in subsequent commands:

bcdedit /set {12345678-0000-1111-9999-112233445566} device boot
bcdedit /set {12345678-0000-1111-9999-112233445566} device partition=c:
bcdedit /set {12345678-0000-1111-9999-112233445566} PATH \linux.boot
bcdedit /displayorder {12345678-0000-1111-9999-112233445566} /addlast

You might need to prepend C: in the second line if it does not work this way.

Reboot and enjoy.