I have a client who has ProSeries 2019 installed on a Windows Server 2012R2 system. When attempting to submit a return for electronic filing, the following error is generated:

This feature requires a Fast Path validation check. Please connect to the internet so that your Fast Path may be validated, then try again.

This happens for any return. As far as I can tell, the internet  is working fine on the system. Updates download. The web browser works. Other applications are fine. Everything seems normal. I've spent two hours on the phone with Intuit Support, but they don't have any solution yet.

I did some additional debugging myself with Microsoft's Process Monitor, and found that when e-filing is chosen, the application is trying to connect to this web site:

SERVER2012R2:52497 -> ec2-54-149-154-172.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com:https

I'm not sure why it's trying to do that specifically, but the next thing I found it that it is writing to this log file:

C:\ProWin19\32bit\logs\proseries.txt

The last thing in the log is four instances of the following error:

2020-02-16 13:10:32,584 [1] ERROR [GetCurrentDateTime Intuit.Applications.ProSeries.Utils.InternetDateTime.InternetDateTime] - URI: https://www.intuit.com

System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed out

   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()

   at Intuit.Applications.ProSeries.Utils.HttpWeb.WrapHttpWebRequest.GetResponse()

   at Intuit.Applications.ProSeries.Utils.InternetDateTime.InternetDateTime.GetDateTimeFromHeaders()

   at Intuit.Applications.ProSeries.Utils.InternetDateTime.InternetDateTime.GetCurrentDateTime(String[] uris)

It appears that the application is trying to load a page from an AWS site, and then pull the current date and time from the header on that page. The operation times out, so the ProSeries application concludes that the internet must not be available.

I'm not sure what pulling the date and time from a web page header has to do with e-filing a tax return. It may just be a way of checking that a site is active.

Anyway, this happens on both ProSeries 2019 and ProSeries 2018 on this Windows Server 2012R2 system.

We made sure the latest updates are installed. We re-licensed the system We've tried things like turning off the firewall and antivirus. I don't have any other ideas of what on the local system could cause this problem. It seems like it could be something on the server side at Intuit.

Has anybody else experienced this problem and found a solution? My client really wants to be able to electronically file some tax returns, because they're starting to stack up!

Thanks in advance for your help.