TurboTax 2013 installation Error: ".NET Framework Verification Tool can't be found"

//Normally I don't write this kind of blog posts but I decided to do it because I was so frustrated.

It is tax season again. I am eager to get some money back so I bought TurboTax 2013 Premier in Jan. However I couldn't install it. The error is ".NET Framework Verification Tool can't be found". I did a search and found a few links. I tried all the popular links and none of them worked. I even uninstalled .net frameworks and reinstalled them. I also tried the blog suggested by InTuit. I tried it for a couple of hours but the error still persisted. I almost gave up. But as a software engineer I wanted to figure out what was going on. I thought about using the tool Orca to modify the setup files ( .msi). Before that I started to explore the files on the CD and it turned out that the solution is super simple. I don't even need to use Orca.

 

The solution is executing the file "TurboTax 2013\TurboTax 2013 Installer.exe" directly and it will skip the annoying verification step. I believe that this is a bug on Turbo Tax 2013 and I am disappointed Intuit didn't fix it or even didn't provide a solution for it.

 

Update: looks like that this solution applies to TurboTax 2014 and 2015 as well.

 

The links I tried but none of them worked for me.

https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1899945-error-net-framework-verification-tool-can-t-be-found-when-installing-or-uninstalling-turbotax-for-windows

https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1900095-troubleshooting-problems-with-the-microsoft-net-framework

https://blog.crosbydrive.com/?p=281