Error 12031 or Similar When Updating Quickbooks 2009

When updating Quickbooks 2009, I've had situations where the "Maintenance Releases" won't update. I get an error #12031 or similar error. Looking in google and the quickbooks sites gave some suggestions about making sure IE was my default browser (ugh!), making sure IE security settings were low enough, etc., but nothing helped. It was also suggested that you do the update manually, which I did, but that didn't fix the error when updates were tried again.

I finally figured it out!

I had added http://*.intuit.com and https://*.intuit.com to my list of trusted sites. It hadn't helped, but I had the right idea.

I ended up using a packet sniffer (wireshark (previously ethereal) from www.wireshark.org) to see where the updates where hitting. It turns out they were going to "server 19" at quickbooks.com, so I added http://*.quickbooks.com and https://*.quickbooks.com to the trusted list and BOOM!, it started download the Maintenance Release update.

To add these sites to the trusted list:

1. Start IE
2. Click Tools/Internet Options
3. Click the Security tab
4. Click Trusted Sites
5. Click Sites
6. Uncheck "Require server verification"
7. Add the http://*.quickbooks.com and https://*.quickbooks.com sites to the list
8. Click OK etc, until the settings windows are closed
9. Try the update again.

Note: this worked for me. I went ahead and removed the sites from the list and re-ran the update and didn't receive an error, but I also didn't have anything to download, so I might not have gotten the error because of that. It may be that Quickbooks servers were having issues and now they aren't, but the timing was right on for the change to have been the solution.