I had to reconfigure my main work computer recently, and also the very first time I ran QuickBooks from then on I ran into a problem: QuickBooks error 3371, “Could not initialize license properties.” This could be a significant error while you can’t work through it to start out your QuickBooks file. Fortunately, it is simple to fix QuickBooks Error 3371. Let’s check out.

The Issue With Cloning
I’m not working with genetic cloning of living organisms (but I could talk about that, if you like), I’m talking about “cloning” a hard drive. In this situation, I wanted to “clone” my C:/ drive onto a larger drive to provide more working room. This essentially is making a defined duplicate of all of the files in the C:/ drive on the new, larger drive, to make certain I truly could swap them and employ that larger drive considering the fact that new C:/ drive.

I’ve been using my main work computer for just about six years now (yes, I hang on to my computers a long time), while the C:/ drive is getting full. It gives a measly 500 Gigabyte drive and less than 10% is empty. I discover that surprising, you might say, since i recall my excitement once I got my first computer with a 10 megabyte hard drive, and how that seemed to be a lot more room than i possibly could ever fill. Now I’m discovering that a drive which has had 50,000 times the capability is just too big small? Sheesh.

I really could have worked on an approach to free up space on that C:/ drive, however with the expense of hard disks being so low, it simply didn’t be the better choice to take all of that time. So, I acquired myself a 2 Terabyte drive, used the free style of Todo Backup by EaseUS, and I also cloned the old drive in the new drive, while also expanding the partition.

By the way, I’m not visiting the details of how to do the cloning here, and there are lots of preparation steps you will need to decide to try create your drive. Todo Backup is an extremely great product, nonetheless it doesn’t do all the work.

The cloning process took around 3 hours, nearly all which has been just getting excited about the cloning to accomplish. When it comes to was done, I booted up utilizing the new, larger drive, after which it I ran QuickBooks. Oops! QuickBooks Error 3371!

QuickBooks Error 3371

Clicking OK for the reason that window shows me another error dialog:

QuickBooks Fatal Error

Clicking OK here just closes the window. No QuickBooks!

I was particularly frustrated at the moment because I became pretty quickly, i wanted to obtain some tax information out of the file to make use of in a gathering later to the day. Poor thinking about my part – i ought ton’t open up my computer to tinker along with it whenever We have meetings coming up!

Essentially, precisely what is happening is the fact that I have a “license” for this as a type of QuickBooks about it particular machine. Intuit stores license information on my hard drive so when that information becomes corrupted, or doesn’t match up for whatever reason, you receive this error. I’m not entirely sure which method Intuit uses to be sure of the license, but a standard a person is to store a “system signature” that looks at the hardware configuration. Model of processor, amount of memory, size/configuration of hard disk, things such as that. There are many more methods, and Intuit can use several, however it is an extremely common method this is certainly very easy to program. So, once I copied (“cloned”) most of the information from the old hard disk drive towards the brand new one, and replaced the old drive utilising the new, my new C:/ drive had still another size, a unique kind of product number, and so forth. So, the configuration that QuickBooks saved didn’t match what it had been seeing. License violation! I’m copying my software to a different-looking system, and yes it didn’t such as this.

Solving QuickBooks Error 3371

The 2 error dialogs that popped up into the program offered different solutions – reinstalling the item or finding out about information when you consider the support website.

I didn’t do you need to take time to do a reinstallation. I’m impatient, which takes some time. It truly isn’t clear in my opinion if I have to do on a clean install, for which you need to first uninstall the present program, run the QuickBooks Clean Install tool, and then reinstall this system. Which should work, though, because it would eliminate the licensing files and also have you to definitely register again.

Since they display a support link, have you considered to try that? Unfortunately, the hyperlink they display will likely not take me to a help article. It redirects us to a generic support page. Rats!

QuickBooks support page

Realize that once you ask an issue here, the page filters the answers devoted to QuickBooks product (Online, Windows or Mac). You might find the appropriate product utilizing the “change” link during the upper left.

Entering “Error 3371” in the search box does not always give you an instant answer, though. I’ve tried this a lot of different times while writing this informative article, and each time I get different results. The very last time I attempted, none for the first 25 answers had most situations to do with this kind of error. Some other tests used to do find some home elevators it, nevertheless it doesn’t always show up.

The support page seems to give preference to Intuit discussion board discussions, instead of any help articles that Intuit might have created. I wonder should this function as the direction they're going for assist in the long term, utilising the community discussions as opposed to canned help articles they create?

Whatever the case, instead of sending you off to chase this down whenever you look at the support site, here’s how I fixed the problem.

In your keyboard, hold down the Windows key and press R. This opens the Run dialog.

Windows Run dialog

Given that window enter C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v8 and then click OK. This will open Windows Explorer at that location.

QuickBooks entitlement directory

Right click on the EntitlementDataStore.ecml file and choose Delete to delete this file.

You'll be able to close this window, then run QuickBooks. You are asked to register the product again.

QuickBooks registration

Normally you are likely to have only to resolve an easy question, when I show below. A number of the older versions of QuickBooks may be a bit more complicated, and it's also possible that you’ll have to call Intuit to do your registration. Inside my case, not a problem.

Verifying registration
Success!
A couple of things that i would like to point out:
If you should be a ProAdvisor with multiple copies of QuickBooks on your own system you will have to re-register every form of QuickBooks installed with this particular computer. That is not surprising, plus it just takes a couple of minutes. Just keep that in mind if you should be in a rush.
The folder that I specify should work with QuickBooks products from 2013 through 2016.
There might be another folder from the computer that holds entitlement information for some older versions of QuickBooks, C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v6.0. This can work with QuickBooks 2012 and older.
This issue will simply impact the workstation aided by the configuration change. If you are in a networked environment with separate computer systems, the others must not be affected.