program keeps asking for a value in box 17, even though there is no box 17 on my actual form
if you edit the 1099 (Wages & Income / I'll Choose What to Work on / Interest on 1099-INT etc), there should be a checkbox on the screen to show all the boxes. I'm guessing this was imported which sometimes has this issue, you probably have a zero in box 17 so it's asking for an ID for box 16. Try to delete the zero figure in Box 17 and leave it blank. If that doesn't work try to re-input the 1099-INT manually from scratch and delete the old one causing the error.
If you imported the 1099-INT, delete it and enter it manually.