My Turbotax Deluxe 2024 wouldn't activate either. I tried all the same things many others have ... disabling firewall, adding exceptions for apps and websites, etc. Things that work for one person don't work for another, and everyone is baffled. Intuit has no idea and doesn't care because they just keep blindly selling and don't tell support staff how anything works.
I FINALLY got my TurboTax to activate with YET ANOTHER SETTING CHANGE:
1. Go to Control Panel --> Internet Options (aka "Internet Properties" in the title bar)
2. Click the tab titled "Connections"
3. At the bottom of the panel, click the "LAN settings" button.
4. In the Local Area Network (LAN) Settings dialog box that appears, see if "Use a proxy server for your LAN" is checked. If it is, it could be pointing to a background process that isn't running; perhaps a security filter for web traffic; perhaps something that isn't even installed; perhaps some security crapware from McAfee, Norton, or Microsoft.
5. If it is checked, click the Advanced button and write down what all the settings are. THEN UNCHECK the "Use a proxy server for your LAN" box and CLICK OK.
6. Activate your Turbot Axe software. (This worked for me)
7. When finished, bo back to the Proxy Server LAN settings and re-check the "Use a proxy server for your LAN" box and verify that the Advanced settings have been restored to what they were before.
If you discover that the proxy server settings were bogus or obsolete in the first place, then don't bother to restore the setting.
Mine was set to redirect HTTP traffic to IP address 127.0.0.1, port 8082, which would be a local process running on my computer. The TurboTax activation server probably got rejected by it, causing the "not connected to the Internet" misinformation message. I have no idea what would be running locally on that port, so I am leaving the box UN-checked for now. **bleep** crapwhere is everywhere.
