The support person I talked to tried to convince me that this was a problem with my network or windows system. None of my other software programs requirenew activation codes every time I start them. I tried all of the steps to fix the re-activation question on the same computer that it has been working on and none of them work. I normally have two external drives connected to my laptop and thought I would try removing the one that I don't always have hooked up to the computer, but that didn't work. Then, just for grins, I ejected (software disconnected) my backup drive and now TurboTax starts perfectly. This is a licensing BUG in their software. There is no way that connecting or disconnecting external drives should affect whether the software thinks it is running on the same computer or not. I had this same problem last year, but never figured out the root cause. Intuit: Please fix this BUG in your licensing software so that normal people (who connect and disconnect disk/thumb drives and other USB devices all the time) can use your software without running into a re-activation issue. I've lost at least 6 hours of my life because of this problem. :(
