Fixing TurboTax BootStrapper Setup Failed
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Last night some friends called and told me they were having problems installing Intuit’s TurboTax, every time they tried to install it Turbo Tax would have an error that BootStrapper Setup Failed and asked if i’d come check it out.
On Intuit’s web site the make it clear that if you get this error you need to uninstall .net framework 2.0 Link. What they don’t tell you is what to do if you can not uninstall .net framework 2.0.
Going into the control panel and clicking remove on a program doesn’t always work. This is what happened in the problem last night. With .net Framework, many programs use it in the background of your system, so it could have either been corrupt or windows just didn’t want to let it go, if some other program was using it.
Searching for a way to uninstall .net framework 2.0 manually pointed me to this site Aaron Stebner’s Blog where he’s written a program that will completely uninstall all the .net frameworks that you choose. The .NET Framework Cleanup Tool worked perfectly, one thing you may notice is that since many programs use the .net framework in their background, once you reboot some programs like at&t firewall and other things may not work, BUT once you download this .net framework 2.0 SP1, install it and reboot all programs should start to work once more.
If this post helped you please leave a comment, thank you
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5 Stars for this, thank you so much. I have been trying to fix this issue for 5 hours, contacted Intuit with no success. Once I happened on to your site the software was up and running in no time flat.
Thank you so much,
Vickie
I also had this issue last year, when I tried to use Turbo Tax. This year the error “Bootstrap failed” reared its ugly head again, and I despaired. Fortunately, the above tip sent me to Aaron’s website which provided the answer. I did not have to perform the final step ( NET framework 2.0 SP1) to get other programs running, but will keep the link to the tip and tool handy.
Thanks again. It saved me many hours of work.
Dude – you rock -thanks!
I do want to let you guys all know, there is a reason that that tool isn’t obviously available on the TurboTax support site – they only want people to use it as a last resort because the tool does pose a risk to the system. The tool removes registry entries, and has the potential to damage (sometimes permanently) the OS. The article on the TurboTax support site that you would should have found is 6586, which is also easily found by clicking the support tab, then searching for “bootstrapper”.
Here’s the link to the article.
(http://turbotax.intuit.com/support/kb/installing/errors/6586.html)
Another way to do the same thing, is to use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to remove the registry part of .NET, then manually delete all .NET related files, which allow you to install with no problems (Aaron Stebner’s tool essentially does all this in one click)