Folks, I finally figured it out and I want to share what I learned in case anyone else digs up this thread later, with a similar problem. Last night, in a daze, while staring and waiting for my old slow PC, not even thinking about QuickBooks, I noticed a file in Windows Explorer titled, "QuickBooks Validation Code." Evidently, 12yrs ago, I wrote down the validation code in that document and tucked it away in my PC files. My file explorer happened to be open to that directory last night and evidently, I forgot about the file. Haha! Lo and behold, I typed the code into the new PC and voila...IT WORKED!! I was super thrilled! However, I realize folks coming to this thread may not have their activation code at all. Therefore, read on for a work around...
While troubleshooting the issue, I was browsing the web and found THIS PAGE. I learned that the following file is what tells QuickBooks whether it is 1) in a 30-day trial, 2) outside of the 30-day trial and needing registered, or 3) registered and operable.
"C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v5\EntitlementDataStore.ecml"
The file is binary, so I don't know what it contains. I tried to copy/paste the old PC's ECML file to the new PC. However, QuickBooks errored during launch; i.e., it would not even open to the start screen to tell me it needed registered. So I deleted the ECML file altogether. Lo and behold, QuickBooks opened perfectly fine on the new PC, but the 30-day free trial was restarted at 0 days. Thus, had I not found my validation code, as mentioned in my first paragraph, I would have been content to merely delete the ECML file once a month so I could continue using the software. In my opinion, that file deletion is a very minor setback, in exchange for continued use of the software. So hopefully, this will help someone else if they would like to continue using their old version of QuickBooks.
