* * AOL & IE * *

I am Win98 using IE 6.0 (upgraded from 5.5) and AOL 7.0. I have been at this configuration for several months with no problems with the entire system. Recently I lost the ability to use AOL's broswer for any www activity and receive the following message:

Action canceled
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily unavailable.
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Please try the following:
Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
If you have visited this page previously and you want to view what has been stored on your computer, click File, and then click Work Offline.
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Though, using AOL as my ISP I have no difficulty reaching any site using IE standalone or Netscape. Otherwise AOL is fine for its content that does not require going out to the web. I have been in touch with AOL and have received every excuse in the book (most curious is a tech told me AOL 7.0 has not been tested to work with IE 6.0 -- how can this be since AOL 7.0 is validated for WinXP which only comes with IE 6.0?) Finally AOL tells me its an MS problem. I have done every repair in the book: scan disk, defrag, reinstall AOL, IE Add/Remove Repair, check and verified all IE settings, dropped back to AOL 6.0 with a reinstall, I'm current on virus scans, removed any spyware with Ad-Aware, cleaned cache, cleaned temp, reinstalled AOL adapters, and on and on. I should also not here that I've periodically had this problem across different machines with AOL 4/5/6/7 and IE 5,5.5,6. This problem usually goes away after a few days with no intervention from me but this time its going o 10 days. Since this begun I've not installed any software.