Run the TurboTax installer until the error dialog pops up. Click the close button since you can't go any further. Now press WinKey-R and type %TEMP% to go to the temporary folder. Copy the ckz_xxxx folder to the desktop. Select the setup.exe file and press CTRL-C then CTRL-V to make a copy.
Now use radare as follows:
Command | Description |
---|---|
r2 -A -w "setup - copy.exe" | analyze and allow writing |
axt str.Detected_OS_is_WIN_8_or_above | look for references to this string |
s 0x402ec2 | seek to the location that was found in the previous command |
VV | now we are at the node references the string. You need to reverse the opcode in the previous node by changing je 0x402ed9 to jnz 0x402ed9 |
Shift-TAB | go to previous node |
( | reverse the opcode |
exit from visual mode | |
q | quit radare |
Now you can click on "setup - copy.exe" and install without error. (Note that the Verified publisher says "unknown" even though we only changed one byte.)
Open the setup.exe file and at offset 0x000022c0 change the 74 to 75. Save it and you are done. Remember this offset only works with the version of TurboTax Deluxe mentioned above. If you have another version, follow the radare instructions above to find the right offset.
DISCLAIMER: This is for educational purposes only. Use TurboTax in Windows 7 at you own risk. It most likely will work just fine, but Intuit doesn't want to support older versions of Windows.
Can someone provide a solution that actually works?
First of all, do not give us an absolute memory address, as it obviously changes.
Instead, give us a snippet of the disassembled code to search for, that is sufficiently long and unique.
Secondly, MSI unpacking does not install files, it just unpacks them. It does not create Windows Registry entries,
or setup Windows services, etc... TurboTax does use a service called "Intuit Update Service v4" that needs to be installed
correctly. Only the installer can do this. MSI unpacking will just give you a broken installation, that isn't an installation at all.
The only acceptable solution is to modify Setup.exe. Files need to be installed properly.