I downloaded TurboTax a few weeks ago and updated it through the program. Yesterday the update window check came up and I clicked but it said “server name or address could not be resolved.” I tried to check the status of a return (this worked fine a couple of weeks ago) and it said “server execution failed”. I also couldn’t reach a TurboTax support page, however I could reach the chat.
The tech told me it was my server’s problem and to call them. I did, and he said it was a problem, most likely, with one of TurboTax’s servers. So, here I sit with returns to do and probably can’t e-file them and absolutely no help.
Right now I’m downloading the updates to install manually; they couldn’t even tell me if there were new ones since 2/14 when I last updated.
I want to know if either of these people know what they are talking about or if this could happen just because their servers are overloaded. It’s not the software because as I said, it worked fine two weeks ago. I’ve reinstalled the damm thing twice. I also checked the connection through TruboTax and that’s fine.
TurboTax is great UNTIL you have a problem and then you have to watch that chat window popping and the same message over and over for 50-60 minutes or get disconnected; OR, you can pay if you want an actual human voice on the phone. I absolute refuse to pay for tech problems.
I’m not going to use them next year. Speaking of that: my second question: can anyone recommend some good tax software?
From the error messages you quoted, it appears to be a problem with your ISP’s DNS servers. Do a ping on TurboTax’s server. If you get something like “hostname not found,” it’s the DNS. If you get something like “destination timeout,” it’s TurboTax’s problem.
Hi Ranger. The error code says what you said, that there could be a problem with my ISP’s DNS server, but after being bounced back and forth between “it’s not our fault” four times, at 3am this morning I’m sitting here staring at the screen trying to figure out what I hadn’t done to try to fix this. Then I remembered that I had taken ZoneAlarm off the start menu because I had been having some problems since I installed it. And I had forgotten about it because I wasn’t getting those popup windows. So, I went to the start menu and there was one other ZA entry; so I decided to just uninstall it: and viola, TurboTax was working fine. It really burns me that since ZoneAlarm is probably one of the top firewall programs that TurboTax didn’t at least know it might cause this problem. I love TurboTax and the convenience of being able to carry over info from the prior year; but their support SUCKS for various and other assorted reasons besides this particular one. If it isn’t in the FAQ you are really out of luck unless you want to spend an hour staring at the chat window.
Err… it’s not upto turbo tax to determine if there’s a firewall or not. It’s up to you to configure ZA so that it allows the ports TT request to be opened for whatever reason. Same with any and every other problems that you’ve experienced with ZA. It’s configuration of the damned thing(you have to select ‘programs that you want to give inet access to’ if i remember right… other firewalls open by default ports 21 ftp, 25 smtp, 80 http etc and you have to open manually the rest through configuration) that causes problems. Reinstall ZA and try playing around with it… all your problems will disappear