[rchuri]

I had this problem yesterday,Feb 9, on both my desktop and laptop.

Also see
http://support.micro....com/kb/308421]


The text below was from a Computeric Blog (http://www.cumberdale.com/2008/02/01/taxcut-2007-damages-windows-xp-installations/ )

h2. [TaxCut 2007 damages Windows XP installations

Written on February 1, 2008

Beware,
TaxCut 2007 will incorrectly change permissions on the “Program Files”
folder on a Windows XP computer. It removes all permissions and
replaces them with the full control for the current user and SYSTEM. If
you only one user account will likely not notice. However if you have
more than one user, the other user(s) will not be able to run programs
in the “Program Files” folder - just about everything!

Other users have experienced this problem (here and here)and apparently TaxCut technical support will not acknowledge the problem.

To fix, right click on the “Program Files” folder on your “C:”
drive, select properties, then the security tab. Add the following
users/groups with the following permissions:

Administrators - Full Control
Power Users (XP Pro only) - All permissions except Full Control
SYSTEM - Full Control
Users - Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read

If you are using Windows XP Home Edition, you will not see a security tab as described above. You must reboot in safe mode before you can access the security setting.

It also appears that TaxCut 2007 will also not run under a limited
account. It is unclear why this is required, especially since it save
its data file under the user’s “My Documents”. It’s likely that it is
another example of software designed in the Windows 9x days where there
was no concept of security and has not bee updated.

[Evildave]

That's some very badly written old software demanding to have full access rights in the 'Program Files' folder.

No app should ever need to modify anything in there after it's installed. Patches should be a deliberate 'install' step as well.

Most likely it's a bug introduced by the programmers while trying to kludge the 2006 edition to work with Vista.

Seems to pair up nicely with the SPYWARE that ships with TurboTax.

I think it meshes well with Federal and IRS policies, all in all.

Either let 'big brother' watch you, or we'll scramble your OS!

It's the NEW American way!

[Evildave]

Hey, looky! I found a free one made by open-source-commies!

http://www.taxcodeso...rg/overview.asp

[Evildave]

Aww, but there's no file releases.
Here's another one that DOES have a download...

opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/

Looks hideous and hard to use, though.

Some other free packages...
http://www.irs.gov/e...18986%2C00.html

[http://taxes.about.com/b/2006/01/26/reviews-of-free-tax-software.htm]

[Tmade]

Well I just fell victim to this one too. When their support pages says to disable all non microsoft services and disable most the start up items....yeah dumb me I knew better. After the installation failed again, I got online with their tech support and they sent me a new download. I reset the permissions, but still the new download didn't work and I found an entry in my system event log after I tried the installation.

From the System event log after trying the installation with the new download.

The installation of C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataTaxCut2007cache{BEE4CAF1-68EC-4E98-AAEA-FEEAA0CC5827}TaxCut 2007.msi is not permitted due to an error in software restriction policy processing. The object cannot be trusted.

I have no policies set on my system and it doesn't touch my production network so I don't get any policy from AD or Zenworks.

The technician said that he was going to escalate it to second level and I should hear back in 2 days. Yeah great.

I used the software last year without an issue. I guess I should have stayed with Turbo Tax. Tax cut is a poorly written piece of software and I have alerted all my technicians to notify their department heads.

As any IT person knows the next two weeks tax software mysteriously shows up on end users computers and I don't want to have to deal with this on an enterprise level.

Hope someone gets it figured out and sue's them too!

That's my rant and I'm sticking to it!

T

[snorg]

Things like this are why you should backup your Windoze partition.

[Tmade]

I do have a backup, just frustrating cause I know that most of my users who are high profile people don't on their laptops and I'll have to deal with that.

Doesn't software behaving like that constitue a virus? I mean we've seen them before make changes to systems, rename drives and other things.

Humm....