Uninstalling AOL

[pops139]

Ok, just helped a customer install XP over ME. Everything went great and I was very pleased with the results. She had been an AOL member and we copy and pasted her email addresses to Outlook express and did the same with her favorites before we upgraded to XP. Now, after the upgrade, AOL is insisting on upgrading her from her 5.0. Well, of course, she does not want to upgrade and really wants to uninstall it. However, AOL is not listed in the Add/Remove list and I have no idea of how to get rid of the little ^%%#. Please, advise ASAP. Pops

 

[Akash]

thats weird

see a client of mine had a machine badly built for him so i worked on it ...
everything went fine til aol went in so he brought the machine back to me.
when it came to uninstalling, well it was in add/remove but wouldnt let me physically uninstall... something on the lines of it couldnt detect aol installed ... er duh!

anyway, i had to manually delete it ... delete the folder and make sure all that aol startup doesnt happen.

 

[ac1d]

if all fails, you can always delete it from the registry edit

 

[Qumahlin]

Yeah, AOL really went off the wall with problems in XP wanna hear something really funny?

I built a computer for a friend. she uses aol so I had to install it...AOL 6.0 detected her modem and all perfectly in XP but the problem is AOL has a script running that gets the windows ver you are using and if it is XP you cannot connect to AOL unless you download and install AOL 7!!

So I thought what the hey...installed AOL 7...well AOL 7 crashed or would blue screen with a different error EVERY single time during the modem detection process...I called AOL as a last resort they told me to call microsoft....but when I posed the question of um if it's a windows problem why does aol 6.0 work the girl told me it worked by accident ummm alrighty then

Resolution:I installed AOL 6 again and completely deleted 7. I then opened waol.exe and every aol auto load file and changed every mention of aol 6 to aol 7...only thing it seemed to break by doing this was her favorites list working 100% but hey atleast it works

Moral of Tale: AOL sucks

 

[pops139]

Thank you guys. Qumahlin, that was the solution I had in mind, but just hate to take the chance with 7.0 as she really doesn't need it anymore. Is there any way other than thru the registry to delete it? AOL truely SUCKS.

 

[Qumahlin]

well if she truly isn't going to be needing it at all just delete it's directory..then if you want you can use any regcleaner program and when it sees the aol directory is gone it will auto delete all pointers to it

 

[orbish]

aol = satan

 

[jw50]

The best way to solve this problem as well as head off future problems is to backup all her data files, reformat her hard drive and do a clean install of XP. Then make sure nobody ever sticks an AOL CD in it again

I know that it is a pain having to do this but in the long run it is a much better way to go.