11692: Drake Tax Shuts Down, Crashes, or Closes Unexpectedly

The following steps will help to resolve when the software closes unexpectedly without a message page. You may also see the message: "You have performed an illegal operation and the program will shut down." To troubleshoot this issue, you will need to check settings in Drake Tax, on Windows, and your security software programs.

If you get a message like "Drake has encountered an error..." see Related Links below for additional steps. 

First, check your Drake Tax setup options. Some systems will close unexpectedly when calculating when certain Drake Tax options are enabled.

1. Go to Setup > Options > Calculation & View/Print tab. 
2. Uncheck the option Audible notification of calculation error messages
3. Set the Pause option for calculation to either Always after calculation or After view or print only. 
4. Save settings and test the results.
   • If you continue to have issues, continue to the next section regarding Windows settings. 

Other users have reported similar crashing or closing issues when certain Microsoft Windows settings are enabled. To check these settings:

• From your Windows icon, select Settings > Accessibility.
• Select Mouse pointer and touch, and turn off the option Touch indicator.
• Under Related Settings, select Text Cursor, and turn off the Text cursor indicator.

Note that your computer region and language must be set to English (United States). See Related Links below for Region/Language settings that can cause similar crashing issues.

There have been reports of this problem being caused by security software, such as Trend Micro PCCillan, Kaspersky, and Panda. If the above setting changes do not fix your issue, configure your antivirus (see Related Links below for details).

Crashing when calculating just one return

If your software is crashing or closing unexpectedly when working with just one return, some additional causes/fixes are: 

• the size of PDF attachments - see Related Links below. 
• the size and format of your logo - see Related Links below. 
• repair the file by pressing CTRL + Shift + R while in data entry of the return. This will remove any unused records or previously deleted screens to streamline calculations.  

If you continue to have issues, contact Drake Support at (828) 524-8020 for additional troubleshooting options.