From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 7 15:25:20 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 598FE37B401 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 15:25:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shire.ontko.com (shire.ontko.com [199.164.165.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B108843FA3 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 15:25:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nathanst@ontko.com) Received: from shire.ontko.com (nathanst@localhost [127.0.0.1]) h37MOmTr019060; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 17:24:48 -0500 Received: (from nathanst@localhost) by shire.ontko.com (8.12.3/8.12.3/Debian-6.3) id h37MOgxv019057; Mon, 7 Apr 2003 17:24:42 -0500 From: Nathan Stratton Treadway Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 17:24:42 -0500 To: emulation@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20030407222442.GA18087@ontko.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i cc: Julian Elischer Subject: Re: vmware and turbotax X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 22:25:20 -0000 On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Julian Elischer wrote: > On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Mark Santcroos wrote: > > > On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 12:04:08PM -0800, Julian Elischer wrote: > > > Yeah mine ran the last few years as well, > > > just not the new one.. > > > > > > stops immediatly with some error (I forget.. something descriptivelike: > > > > I don't know the program, but do you need a license or an activator for > > it? (My question is: is it copy protection or something else?) > > It could check for some things; cpuid, mac address, that sort of stuff. > > yes it has an activator and I thinkit is doing something like that. > However it would be interesting what cpuid-type instruction vmware > doesn't do, considering that win98 works and IT has > similar activation. > > > > > What was that windows debugger called? WinIce or something like that? > > You could give it a try to run it in there to find out what it is doing. > > possibly but at present I have it running on > the raw hardware and I'll just buy the competition next year. I found this old thread about TurboTax and VMWare when researching this problem for myself, and thought some other readers of this list might be interested to know that I found this article on the VMWare site: http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=901 Sure enough, turning acceleration off allows me to get past the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library "Runtime error! ... abnormal program termination" dialog box that I otherwise got when starting TurboTax 2002. I haven't gone too far through the process, but it seems that I can turn the acceleration back on as soon as the program is started, and it still works fine. (So it does seem to be related to the Macromedia licensing software that Inuit added this year :( ) (This is with VMWare 3.2.0 running on a Linux host.) Nathan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathan Stratton Treadway | nathanst@ontko.com | Mid-Atlantic region Software consulting services | Ray Ontko & Co. | http://www.ontko.com/