For what it is worth, and on the assumption that your computer was restarted multiple times during the troubleshooting process, I can only speculate and due to a lack of data it would be more of a W.A.G. than speculation.
- Bad Kharma (high on my list of suspects
) - a startup item that either got turned off or updated somewhere along the line.
- A task, running in the background that eventually concluded
- a background task that was automatically updated without your noticing
- a corrupted scratch file that eventually got overwritten or replaced
Update...
- When you install TurboTax, Glance is installed along with it.
- While I was dealing with the Intuit tech, and, I think, precisely while my attempt to generate a PDF was beach-balling, one Glance plist was modified, and two minutes later, a new one was generated.
- Immediately afterwards, I was able to generate the elusive PDF.
Technically, there doesn't seem to be any reason why Glance should interact with TurboTax, but it seems like it would have been an awfully bizarre coincidence for what happened to have happened both on its own and at that particular moment.
Aside: I'm finding this year's TT Deluxe to be a major purveyor of beachballs! It's always been on he slow side, but this year, it's outdoing itself.
Now maybe you can explain to me why H&R Block and one or two other apps refuse to update so i have to download and install the full app every time.
I've been curious for years about the fact that all TurboTax updates are virtually the same size, and I'll guess that your question as it relates to H&R Block mirrors my curiosity, and here's what I've thunk up...
TT is unusual in that it doesn't offer users the luxury of time: You install it, launch it, update it, and prepare and file your tax return, and if there's a glitch in the update, you either find out about when it's too late, or never find out about it at all.
So I'll guess that TT does its best to minimize the possibility of those possible scenarios by reinstalling the entire guts of the app in every update, rather than doing traditional line-by-line updates.
Perhaps what you've described is H&R Block's approach to the problem.
