ARGH! AOL Service

[squeech]

Hello all,

I currently have three customer's computers up on my tech bench, all with the exact same problem. When the customer's try to connect to AOL, it takes three dial attempts (no matter what access numbers are used) and then connects to AOL.

At that point all AOL services work great, however a message shows up in the corner saying:
"AOL has detected an error with connecting to the internet. Please exit AOL software, restart the machine, and sign on again."
and any access to the WWW is blocked.

I have rebooted all machines multiple times, replaced the modems in all machines (with different brands and speeds each time), reinstalled AOL (version 8), and I even ran a repair install in XP on one machine!! I have reloaded AOL's network adapters also...all to no avail!

As much as I would like to tell these people that they need to switch ISPs, that's not really in my job description. Does anyone have any suggestions?? Is AOL experiencing server problems or something??

Thanks in advance

[rockpile]

Do they all have the same OS and do they have all have AOL as their ISP or are they using it with another ISP? Can they pull a valid IP address or not?

[squeech]

Two machines have 98 and one is XP Home.

AOL 8 is the sole ISP software. I'm not sure if they are pulling good IPs though. How do I check?

[Steve R Jones]

AOL 8 is the tool of the devil. Bet if you installed 7, it'll work.

[SoopaStar]

I ran into this problem on an XP machine as well. I had to wipe out AOL 8, thrn run a registry/cleaning program to make sure it was completely gone, and then reinstall 8.0 from bare scratch to get it to work. I don't know what the problem was, but that 8.0 is really crappy.
I agree with the above suggestions, have the customer go back to 7.0. However, I think AOL is forcing everyone to start using 8.0 after a while, so that would only be a bandaid.

Paul

[squeech]

Sadly, installing AOL 7.0 had no effect...

[rockpile]

Is it dialup or broadband AOL?

[squeech]

dialup

[rockpile]

Have you contacted AOl and asked their toubleshooting experts and I was also wondering what they said. Are all of the customers in the same area of town or spread about?

[squeech]

AOL blamed the individual customer's modems (as they ALWAYS do), and said to replace them.

Customers are located approx. 50 miles from each other.