vmware and turbotax

[Julian Elischer]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Nathan Stratton Treadway wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Julian Elischer wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Mark Santcroos wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 12:04:08PM -0800, Julian Elischer wrote:
> > > > Yeah mine ran the last few years as well,
> > > > just not the new one..
> > > > 
> > > > stops immediatly with some error (I forget.. something descriptivelike:
> > > 
> > > I don't know the program, but do you need a license or an activator for
> > > it? (My question is: is it copy protection or something else?)
> > > It could check for some things; cpuid, mac address, that sort of stuff.
> > 
> > yes it has an activator and I thinkit is doing something like that.
> > However it would be interesting what cpuid-type instruction vmware 
> > doesn't do, considering that win98 works and IT has 
> > similar activation.
> > 
> > > 
> > > What was that windows debugger called? WinIce or something like that?
> > > You could give it a try to run it in there to find out what it is doing.
> > 
> > possibly but at present I have it running on 
> > the raw hardware and I'll just buy the competition next year.
> 
> 
> I found this old thread about TurboTax and VMWare when researching this
> problem for myself, and thought some other readers of this list might be
> interested to know that I found this article on the VMWare site:
>  http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=901
> 
> Sure enough, turning acceleration off allows me to get past the
> Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library "Runtime error! ... abnormal
> program termination" dialog box that I otherwise got when starting
> TurboTax 2002.  
> 
> I haven't gone too far through the process, but it seems that I can turn
> the acceleration back on as soon as the program is started, and it still
> works fine.  (So it does seem to be related to the Macromedia licensing
> software that Inuit added this year :( )
> 
> (This is with VMWare 3.2.0 running on a Linux host.)


thanks for that..
I finished my taxes using W98 on teh real hardware so I don't need it
any more. :-)

but We only have vmware2.x on FreeBSD (gotta fix that one day) and I
don't remember seeing an 'acceleration' checkbox anywhere.
(maybe I'l look again tonight when I go home).

thanks for the pointer though..

Julian


> 
> 						Nathan
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nathan Stratton Treadway      | nathanst at ontko.com |  Mid-Atlantic region    
> Software consulting services  | Ray Ontko & Co.    |  http://www.ontko.com/  
>