Windows

As a former employee of AOL (Thank goodness I moved on) I know quite a bit about the AOL client and as a beta tester for AOL I know alot about the 6.0 client. AOL can certainly "take over" your network settings if you don't take the proper steps to avoid it. 6.0 is even worse at doing this. AOL is designed for the user with little or no computer skills so to us professionals this can become a problem. Here are a few steps to avoid a problem. Assuming you have a LAN connection to the internet and are not planning to use AOL for your ISP: After installing AOL open the client and go into expert set up and change the settings appropiate to your LAN. Immediately remove the AOL dial up adapter before you restart your computer. Verify all your network settings have not changed and you should be ok. I hope this helps

I just wanted to give my two-cents worth: don't install AOL 5.0 or 6.0 on corporate machines. In my position as a Help Desk analyst, I can count AT LEAST 7 instances of users installing AOL 5.0 or later and totally hosing their PC. Usually, the PC will boot into Safe Mode -- uninstalling the AOL adapter and AOL networking components caused the PC to boot normally again and solved the problem. In at least 3 instances, we were actually forced to reinstall the OS on PC's on which a user had installed AOL. I'm happy to see the response here posted from a former AOL employee -- maybe I can try the suggestion at work. Although not an "answer", per se, I strongly recommend against installing AOL on corporate machines as an "ISP". Use a well known ISP like UUnet, Earthlink, etc.

Good luck!

- Mark

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