Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 still has SEVEN more years of support from Microsoft!

[JohnQT]

Straight from the horse's mouth:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021

Listing	Start Date	Mainstream End Date	Extended End Date
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021	Nov 16, 2021	Jan 12, 2027	Jan 13, 2032

MANY of us in the "Windows community" saw this coming and migrated to this edition of Windows 10 specifically to delay the pain of being forced into that hot mess otherwise known as "Windows 11", using fancy new hardware that is only necessary to handle Windows' ever-increasing BLOAT.

What some of us did not see coming was Intuit taking the easy way out and not actually respecting Microsoft's published EOL support dates for specific Windows 10 editions!

Any "forced" upgrade to Windows 11 on my PCs will happen over my dead body.  If I can't find a way to fool TurboTax into believing that it's running on "Made for Windows 11" hardware then I will finally give up on your government-sponsored taxpayer-supported software project, bite the bullet, and move onto to something else...

Cheers!  😛

[JohnQT]

P.S. I have been running TurboTax in a dedicated Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine for years now.  That VM is still running the same Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 edition as my physical PC... 

When TurboTax releases their Desktop product for TY2025 I will purchase it just to see if I can get it to install and run in that VM as-is, still running this specific edition of Windows 10, using whatever tricks I have up my sleeve.  😎 

If I'm not successful then I will clone that VM and upgrade the clone to Windows 11 (shudder), and confirm/deny whether it will run in a Win11 virtual machine.  I'll update this thread with any success or failure reports, and any hints on how to workaround Intuit's ridiculous requirement for Windows 11, over and above Microsoft's continued support of Windows 10 (not just IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 edition, but now apparently Home and Pro editions, after paying M$ a $30 extortion fee).

If TurboTax will continue to run in a virtual machine (regardless of Windows edition) then this may be a solution for the rest of you that aren't ready to "upgrade" their PCs to Windows 11, or (like me) simply refuse to do that.  Oracle VirtualBox is completely free and it's as easy to install as TurboTax itself.

[JohnQT]

Here's a link to a post from @ATinyDuck a few weeks ago on the same topic (I'm still catching up with all the chatter here on this topic...)

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/re-what-is-hell-is-in[product key removed]ng-me-i... 

[JohnQT]

Seriously Intuit?  Why does your post editor substitute "in[product key removed]ng" in that URL with "[product key removed]"?

[JohnQT]

Ha ha AGAIN, why the built-in censorship of "intuit-dash-doing-dash-telling" ??!!

[JohnQT]

So in the URL that I posted previously (which points to another post here), the forum software is replacing this substring:  tuitHYPHENdoingHYPHENtelli

... with this string: [product key removed]

My best guess is that TurboTax (or some other Intuit product) is/was using product keys in the format XXXXhyphenXXXXXhyphenXXXXX, and whoever manages the forum software here coded some script to try and avoid having product keys shown in the clear on the forum.  However that seems like a pretty clunky approach that will generate a lot of false positives...

My last several purchases of TurboTax were all from Intuit's storefront on Amazon, and my records show that the product keys for TY2022, TY2023, and TY2024 are all sixteen characters long with no hyphens.  So this forum word filter doesn't even apply anymore!

[VolvoGirl]

How are you pasting the url?  You might be doing it wrong.  You just can’t paste it.  You need to use the link icon.  It should let you post the link to another post.   

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/what-is-hell-is-intuit-doing-telling-me-i-have-to... 

[JohnQT]

Further cr@ppy coding:

I fired up my Oracle VirtualBox VM to have a look at the About page on TurboTax 2024 to see if the Product Key there might be displayed with hyphens.  But I am being forced to upgrade that instance to the latest Release patch before I can even use the app to inspect my already filed returns for that tax year!

This is TERRIBLE design, as there's a very high likelihood that the latest Release patch will change the calculations on my already filed return.  Why else would the updater state that "The available updates are marked critical and may affect important functionality"?  My only other options here are to "Continue Updating TurboTax 2024" or "Close" the dialog, in which case TurboTax itself is closed.  So there's NO WAY to view my previously filed return without first updating TurboTax.  Thankfully I saved a PDF copy of the Full return with all Worksheets when I eFiled last year...

FORCING customers to update TurboTax in this way amounts to tampering with legal records.  Your software need some serious functional review!

In any case, the basic programming pattern here seems to be "let's take the easy way out and force behavior instead of coding extra steps to allow customers to make choices".  That pattern does give me hope, as I seriously doubt that the TurboTax programmers will put any real effort at all into preventing their TY2025 software from running on Windows 10.  "Easy way out" most likely means easily defeated or circumvented.  😎

[JohnQT]

I tried it both ways, several times, and got the same results.  In any case I am not the one doing that text substitution for an obsolete product key pattern.  That's coming right from the forum software here...

[JohnQT]

P.S. You'll note that I had to substitute "hyphen" and "HYPHEN" for actual hyphen characters in the body of my actual post, otherwise the forum word filter was doing its substitutions right there in the PREVIEW.  So the problem is not limited to URLs.

[VolvoGirl]

The very first thing I do after installing the program in Windows and doing the first update, is change the Updater settings to ask me first.  To change the Windows program Update Preferences settings go up To Online - Updater Preferences

You can set my "Updater Preferences" to "Always Ask" or more commonly set to "I don't have an internet connection" , and then I am not forced to update....and can manually force an update when I choose to do so.   And then I can open my file(s) at any time with no forced upgrade.

[JohnQT]

Thanks, yes I always do that as well, setting it to "Always Ask".  But I have noticed that after some updates that setting sometimes gets reverted back to the default.  That might have happened when I last updated the program.

Still, there should be a way to change that setting from within a forced update dialog, specifically to avoid the situation that I'm now in with my TY2024 return.  Good coding wouldn't even allow such a bind to happen.  But when Intuit stopped posting actual Revision History for this product several years ago it became obvious at that time that they would cut any corners they could to save money.

I'm sure that they would do away with the TT Desktop product altogether if they thought they could.  But like I've seen you mention elsewhere here, the Online product is simply not in the same class, for so many reasons.  I will revert to filling out the IRS's PDF forms myself and mailing in a pile of paper before I ever start using the Online product.

( "JohnQT" stands for John Q. Taxpayer, I'm not enamored with myself, really...  😁 )

[JohnQT]

I remembered that I can disconnect the virtual Ethernet cable on the virtual machine.  So I did that and tried opening TurboTax again.  It then presented a new dialog telling me that "To get software updates, you need to connect to the Internet," with buttons that say "OK, I Am Connected" and "Cancel".  Clicking Cancel takes me to the previous dialog that shows with the virtual Ethernet cable connected.  So instead of closing that dialog (which terminates TurboTax completely) I chose "Continue Updating TurboTax".

Unfortunately the updater had already downloaded the available updates.  It went ahead and applied the California State form update, but the Program Update requires elevated privileges.  I canceled that UAC dialog when it appeared, TurboTax put up a failure dialog, and I was finally able to get into the program and change the Update Preferences back to "Ask me before getting updates".

"Spaghetti code"  🍝

[JohnQT]

Since the California State form update has already been forcibly applied to TurboTax in my VM, I figured that I might as well let the Updater have its way with the program itself.  As long as I don't Open or Save any of my previously filed returns they "should be" safe from unwanted changes...

So after letting the Updater complete it's "critical" Program Update, lo and behold, I'm presented with this dialog warning me that "Windows 10 support ends in October" (see attached screenshot below).

Why does Intuit assume that anyone would open last year's program for any reason except maybe to amend a return (or just geeky curiosity like me)?  Seems like a lot of effort just to post a sign where most folks won't see it.  I hope they didn't pay their programmers too much for this "feature"...

IMHO the chances of Intuit's programmers putting in any effort to remove this dialog are just about zero.  Anyone here waiting for Intuit to rollback this no-Windows-10-support policy might as well take a deep breath and stop hoping.  😢

[M-MTax]

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@JohnQT wrote:

I'm sure that they would do away with the TT Desktop product altogether if they thought they could.  

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Yeah, they eventually will. It won't be this year nor next nor the year after (probably) but it is going to be a distant memory in future years.

Desktop sales have been declining year-over-year for quite some time and Intuit, IIRC, realizes gross revenue of less than $500 million from desktop sales. That may not sound like chump change initially to most people but then Intuit's revenue was something like $19 billion in the last 12-month reporting period (so it IS sort of chump change when you consider the margin has got to be a lot lower than the online products). 

I'm sure upper-level management has this planned out years in advance and may even have some sort of tentative "sunset date" for the desktop products. No idea when but I am 100% certain it will happen.