Last week a customer brought in his PC because AOL stopped working. I checked out the modem, everything was fine hardware-wise. The problem turned out to be the AOL software. I haven’t used AOL since we got rid of it back in, oh 2000 or so. So when it comes to trying to figure out how to fix it, I have no clue.
Well, the logical thing to do is call AOL. The error message that was popping up had an identification number, so I figured it would be trivial. Well, the first call lasted near a half hour. At the end of it, Ramad in India didn’t get me anywhere. Second call, got me someone in America that I could actually explain things to. Well, that didn’t help at all, and I got transfered up a level. The woman turned out to be a bitch and didn’t help at all. She basically told me that there’s nothing AOL can do to help.
From now on, instead of not saying anything about AOL, I’m going to really recommend people switch away from them. If only people would learn more about their PC and the internet.
6 Comments
Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
I hate AOL, all the bugs and junk that come with it. When someone tells me their computer has slowed down the first question I ask is do you have AOL?
Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Good point that I forgot. AOl does have a ton of crap that comes with it. It almost takes over your PC with all the “search tools” and “extras.”
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 1:53 pm
AOL’s one of the biggest pains in the ass. I don’t know of any other program that went from being able to fit on a single 1.44mb floppy disk, to a nearly 90mb download, ending up close to 150mb when installed, while retaining virtually the same features.
It’s made for idiots, so there’s no custom install option, it just plants whatever garbage it wants without any interaction- including (but not limited to)- AOL Connectivity Service (because standard TCP/IP isn’t “good enough”), AOL Dialer (even if using broadband), AOL Toolbar (doubling IE’s already heavy memory footprint), AOL Deskbar (to occupy any memory not being used by…) AOL Tray Icon (for quickening the loading time of AOL itself… by preloading the entire AOL executable even if you’re not using it yet), AOL Spyware protection (tries to block advertising… unless it’s an AOL sponsor or affiliate), AOL Messenger (despite being integrated into AOL itself), and the installers for ICQ, Compuserve, Winamp, and a few other things I can’t think of.
Usually if there’s random error messages related to AOL, it means some anti-spyware program found something (AOL’s services) meddling with the TCP/IP stack, and restored it to Microsoft defaults, in turn causing the AOL Dialer and Connectivity Services to fail, preventing AOL from contacting the mothership properly, returning some random error to the client. I’ve had to deal with virtually every AOL related problem there is, and it almost always comes down to manually removing every shred of AOL (including hidden files, services, and registry entries- the uninstaller doesn’t do much, just removes the obvious files registry settings, leaving a whole host of crap behind), and reinstalling fresh, re-importing any data they had stored locally.
Fortuntately, people are leaving AOL in droves, most for greener broadband-related pastures. Unfortunately, there are still some people with broadband who keep an active subscription to AOL, because they know no alternative. Or at least, don’t know how to use any alternative, nor have any desire to explore any alternative. Either way, AOL = evil.
Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 2:31 am
“Unfortunately, there are still some people with broadband who keep an active subscription to AOL, because they know no alternative. Or at least, don’t know how to use any alternative, nor have any desire to explore any alternative.”
They don’t know how to use IE?
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
AOL- What a nice company-
They basically send private information to schools claiming that they are “marketing” ie: trying to find a way to make more money for themselves (AOL)——-
Then the information gets out there and the CEO says that a few employees might be disciplined ….what…for your corporate greed…
All members should be sent letters telling them that they have no privacy and that AOL can sell their names up the street.
What a grabage company
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
AOL- What a nice company-
They basically send private information to schools claiming that they are “marketing” ie: trying to find a way to make more money for themselves (AOL)——-
Then the information gets out there and the CEO says that a few employees might be disciplined ….what…for your corporate greed…
All members should be sent letters telling them that they have no privacy and that AOL can sell their names up the street.
What a grabage company
Says the person using AOL with an AOL e-mail. I’m speechless