Question

Windows error when trying to open .qbw file from file explorer

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
September 21, 2025
1 reply
13 views

We are running a Windows terminal server with QB 2024 Accountant Enterprise and 2024 Accountant Desktop Plus/Premier and they have been running fine. This week a QB update crashed and we had to uninstall QB 2024. After we installed them we have to use Run as Administrator to get them to work and we also get an error message when we try to open the .qbw file via File Explorer and Qbox.

Error message is - Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.

Weird thing is it all works under the main admin account that we installed QB with. We have verified the other users have full rights to the folders where .qbw files are and even the QB executables. Even made users full admins and still didn't work.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

QuickBooks Accountant Desktop

D

Deity Alpha

Level 1

Create a backup file and restore it locally. Run the Verify/Rebuild Data utiltiy. Any error messages?

R

RCV

QuickBooks Team

A standard reinstall normally fixes permissions issues, even after a QuickBooks Desktop update crash, so this is unusual, kparks.

We appreciate you checking file and folder permissions and trying to change user privileges. The error message about Windows not being able to access the device or file, and the prompt to run as Administrator, suggest a User Account Control or permission issue. The crash may have damaged some system files that control QuickBooks permissions, and reinstalling did not fix this for every user.

To better isolate the issue, we need to update Windows permissions from the File Explorer. Here's how:

Open the Windows Start menu.
Type "File Explorer" into the search and open File Explorer.
Find your QuickBooks program file.
Right-click your QuickBooks program (QBW32.EXE) file and click Properties.
Tap Security and then Edit.
Hit Add. In the window, type in "Everyone" and then press OK.
In the Security window, choose the checkbox for Full control and then OK.
Select Add again. In the window, type in "Users" and then OK.
In the Security window, select the checkbox for Full control and then OK.
When you're ready, click Apply and then press OK to close your settings.

After following these steps, restart the server and have a standard user try to open the .qbw file directly from File Explorer.

If the same thing happens, it's possible there's data damage on your QuickBooks Desktop company file that we need to fix. You can check out this article for the steps and details: Fix Data Damage on Your QuickBooks Desktop Company File.

Please revisit this thread if you have further questions about accessing your company files or QuickBooks-related concerns.

K

kparksAuthor

Thank you for responding. We have already made sure the Everyone and Users groups have full control to the qb*.exe files as well as the company files and get the same result. We have about 30 or so company files and we also get the same error when opening a sample file and creating a new sample file. An additional note we also use Qbox to check in and check out company files with clients. When we double click the file to open inside of Qbox we get access denied. I still think related to permissions just adding more info.

If you can think of any other permissions to try we are open to it. We checked qblaunch.exe as well to make sure it had full permissions for everyone and even added individual permissions for users.

Thank you.

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