How to Stop QuickBooks Desktop Advertisements & Crashes
Stop QuickBooks Desktop Advertisements & Crashes
Make these changes to your “hosts” file to block QuickBooks from requesting marketing messages from Intuit’s servers.
Note: These changes also seem to stop various QuickBooks crashes! Theoretically this is because when QuickBooks isn’t able to contact Intuit’s marketing servers, it does not instantiate its recently-new-and-buggy 3rd-party freeware embedded browser, which appears to cause various exceptions in the windows kernel, which in turn causes QuickBooks and other applications to crash or hang.
Steps
1) open your “hosts” file
- The file is located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
- Use Notepad or another text editor to open the file.
- For a detailed description of the hosts file and how to open it, see How-To Geek – How to Edit Your Hosts File
2) Add the following lines to the file:
127.0.0.1 logit.api.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 spcentitlement.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 alerts.accnts.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 sci.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 qbdtipd.qbinproduct.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 edge.experimentation.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 tcontent.quickbooks.com
127.0.0.1 http-download.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 qb31bgocd.quickbooks.com
127.0.0.1 qb31bgpatch.quickbooks.com
127.0.0.1 trinity.platform.intuit.com
127.0.0.1 appcenter.intuit.com
#Commented addresses:
#127.0.0.1 http-download.intuit.com #enables downloads including payroll updates
#127.0.0.1 webconnectorclientapp.config-cdn.a.intuit.com
#127.0.0.1 accounts.intuit.com
#127.0.0.1 rebill-sbg.api.intuit.com
#127.0.0.1 assets.intuitcdn.net
#127.0.0.1 oauth.platform.intuit.com
3) Save the file
Our experience
After making these changes, we have noted that:
- QuickBooks no longer randomly pops up adds using windows that appear to be stylized browser windows, or on the home page, or on the left icon-bar. All adds seems to have stopped.
- Our browsers and Windows File Explorer now rarely crash when opening QuickBooks company files, which used to happen consistently.
- QuickBooks seems to have stopped prompting us to log into our Intuit account, which was a constant nuance especially when working with client files.
Troubleshooting
We have not seen any negative side-effect in QuickBooks, such as a feature that don’t work. However, we don’t use all features.
If you notice any issues with any QuickBooks features after making these changes, probably limited to connected features, edit the hosts file again and add hash-tags (the # character) to comment out one or more lines and then test to see if the feature works (probably, restart QuickBooks first). Once you find the line that enables the feature again, remove the hash-tag from the other lines and re-test.
Credit
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