Freezing Aol !!!

Merry Xmas all,

My AOL keeps freezing my PC whilst online (obviously) requiring me to rebbot each time.

After reboot my Norton Scandisk identifies AOL's IDB/MAIN.IDX as having Allocation errors which I repair and carry on until the next freeze - in a loop here !

AOL have tried to help providing numerous tips but none have solved the issue.

This seems to have happened since upgrading to Broadband but I also suffered this with the older AOL 5.0 on a 56k. I have recently also upgraded my CPU from an 850 (that wouldnt cause this though - would it ? PC works great apart from this))

Any ideas ?

System;
P3 1100
512mb SDRAM
GeForce3 Ti500 (45.23)
Win98se
IE6 SP1
2 x HDD (6.4 & 40)
AOL 8.0
Nortons Internet Security 2004
Nortons Utilities 2002

Any help gratefully recieved,

Mick(UK)

 

I once looked into Aol's broadband service and really recommend trashing AOL. You are paying two bills, one to get broadband, then another to get onto AOL. Once you have internet access through your broadband connection, why have AOL, also?

 

I think the first step will be to make sure you are starting with a clean PC. So these things in this order.

• Download, update, run Ad-aware and delete all things it finds.
• Download, update, run Spybot and delete all the things it finds including history files and other normal but not critical files.
• Do a virus scan from an online scanner like RAV or any other that will fix problems it finds.
• Delete any files in c:\ (assuming that your OS runs on C: ) with a pattern filennnn.chk where nnnn is any number so file0001.chk, etc.
• Dump all temp files and empty your recycle bin.
• Locate the full path to the copies of scanreg and scandisk on the hard drive.
• Boot to DOS from a floppy (to make sure the main OS is freed up).
• Do scanreg /fix followed by scanreg /opt on your system drive. You will probably need to point to the exact file location since the path set by the boot floppy may not be extensive enough.
• Do Scandisk /surface /autofix /nosave on your system drive. It doesn't fix any long file name problems but is more complete than if you run it from the Win9X GUI.
• Reboot and do first scandisk (standard only) to deal with any long file name or any other 32bit issues that the DOS scandisk couldn't see or fix then a defrag using either the native one or Norton.
• Note: the order in which you do the above is important. For instance, both Ad-aware and Spybot may remove entries from the registry so better to clean, fix, and optimize it after they are gone.

I know nothing whatever about AOL but if you can safely uninstall and do a clean reinstall using a fresh copy, I would do it. There should be a way to save the problem .idx file to another name and then import contents to a fresh one after the reinstall.

If that doesn't fix you up, it will at least give a known cleans system & app install to work from. Post back with your results and if there is still a problem, there are other 'fix' things to try.

 

Newt,

Thanks m8 - I actually love AOL so would like to keep it!

I will try an uninstall re-install I think - a lot of your suggestions are beyond my meagre intellect i'm afraid. I do regularly run 'spybot' - should I 'repair' all entries it finds ??

I have WinSysClean which performs most of tasks you suggest anyway - I never seem to get any joy in DOS no matter what I type in, always getting bad commands etc etc.

Merry Xmas,

Mick

 

One of the worst things about AOL is that THEY can't even fix it! Here's a good read. If you still insist on using it and the reinstall doesn't help, try upgrading to the 9.0 if available to you.

 

Mick - if you enjoy AOL, by all means stay with it.

As to the rest - if you do one at at time, it isn't that difficult and you will be sure things got done. I never quite know what those auto-clean apps are doing.

I especially recommend booting to DOS (and if you don't want to do the floppy bit, it should do fine from your main system) and doing the two scanreg commands. They will work if typed just as shown. There is a space after scanreg before either /fix or opt while both /fix and /opt are typed in as a single word - no spaces. So
scanreg /fix and press ENTER then when it finishes (may take a while)
scanreg /opt and press ENTER.

 

Thanks guys,

Interesting article - mmmmmmmmmmm?

I will give your tips a go Newt. Leave it with me and i'll report back after Xmas/New Year.

Happy holidays,

Mick

 

Good luck Mick. Hopefully it will all work for you and cure your current problem.

Worst case is you will have a PC that runs faster with fewer problems but AOL will not be helped.

 

I've been having the same problem for about 6 months now, and couldn't find an answer to it, so I was coming to the same conclusion that AOL was the problem. Just last week one of my friends asked me if I could help sort his computer out, he said he was having the problems, he told me what they were and alarm bells started ringin, oddly they were the same as me. I asked him what ISP he was using and he told me AOL. There's a surprise, eh?

I'm running AOL 8.0 on a standard 56kb dial up, so it doesn't seem to matter what version you're on, they all ****!!

But I will try out your suggestions and see if it makes a difference.

Cheers

Billy.