General Chat

I am sitting here with my fingers and toes crossed as I type this! I have been on aol for about 7 years and have only had minor niggly problems. I have also run Norton for all that time. Last week I finally took up aol's offer of broadband with a free wireless router to replace my dial up. My son-in-law (a computer wizz) installed it for me. I was not happy with it being wireless as we are in a very bad reception area for TV, radio and mobile phone signals. He assured me it would be OK. It wasn't!!!!! Aol say that the router must be plugged into the first BT socket, not an extension, and mine is in the kitchen. My PC is on the other side of the house, 3 internal walls from the main BT socket. My house has reinforced concrete walls - not a good conductor of radio waves! My signal strength was low or very low and kept dropping out. After two days I had had enough. I plugged the router into the extension socket by my PC, got 2 x 2metre cables and a connector, and plugged it in. This is where I cross everything again - it's been fine ever since. :o) Maybe you need to be a comuter novice to install broadband, and my son-in-law is just too knowledgable! LOL Aol also recommend that no more than 4 filters are connected to the system, but you need one on every socket. We have Sky in 3 rooms as well as 4 phone extension sockets and I have 6 filters plugged in. Do I need to worry about that amount? Sue xx My son has aol gold in his room, which I installed 6 months ago (wired) and he has had no problems.

Just seen this.. my son waited 15 mins the other day to be connected after first hitting aol button....just takes forever and I thought broadband was so much quicker that dail up to connect to.. I can't count how many times this week it says aol is not responding........ would like to change servers but don't know which one is best to go with..... Pat

BOb Like others who have responded , I have never had any problems with AOL either. I don't use Norton as my antivirus I use AVG and never had any problems with that either. Debby

G'Morning David, apart from sometimes being very slow to connect and all the popup aol ad pages I dont have many problems....... just wondered if my system was at fault.. Bob

Right Sioux, downloaded the removal tool..........and it insists that I remove Norton antivirus 2002 first.......did a search, and its on a removable drive, which is now unplugged.......... however it STILL insists I have to remove Norton antivirus 2002... My search facility says it cant find it...........HELP!! (just re -read the blurb on norton....only goes back to 2003!!!) Philip... I knew that AOL was been taken over........but the Talk talk bit is new to me....... Bob

T o All AOL Users....are you all aware that we are ALL Talk Talk members now ! ! I read in the Daily Star about 2weeks ago now that Carphone Warehouse had bought the whole of AOL's UK Residential Users.The item said that We would not be pressurised into signing up into Talk Talk........well not for the time being anyway.If this is correct then all AOL users should not be paying for their Broadband at all.......should we ? Cheers Everybody,Take Care Phil

I am on AOL Silver Broadband. Takes about 20 seconds to get online once I have logged on. I have been with AOL for many years and have had virtually no trouble though I do find their tech staff need some training and not just be able to read from the manual; whether you go to their online techs or phone you get the same response to your query - which you naturally put down to a bleep somewhere in the system BUT generally the fault is down to AOL and it clears itself automatically within time - I mean hours, or overnight and the problem is also down to their tech staff developing something new (much as GR do !!). Well, I am not sure what changes may be seen now that AOL (UK) is Carphone Warehouse - only time will tell but for sure I will be leaving them in the near future not that I am particularly displeased with them but the faults seem to be coming thicker and faster of late. I did recenmtly have problems with what I thought was their delivery of emails but it seemed that the fault was with the sender ISP - this they should have been able to pick out for me but instead they went through all sorts of rigamarole suggesting I do this and that via Control Panel etc., which, of course, did nothing. I have known for some time that Norton is not a good facility to have when using AOL, otherwise I can honestly say that I have none of the other problems that have been shewn here and I spend most time on European sites. Having said all that there is only one 'site with which I do have problems - and it is not really earth shattering but - any MSN sites are IMPOSSIBLE - I have tried to post Meet pics on the GR albums which are an MSN site and the computer immediately freezes and then crashes as soon as I try to log in !. NO problems with ANY other site !!

Hmmm! Sioux, will take you up on that URL........let you know how I get on........Thanks. Bob

Bob honey, I havn't had that pleasure ,as hubby is in the 'know' about PC stuff so we wouldn't touch it with a proverbial barge pole ;~D You could try the Norton removal tool from Symantec.. http://service1.symantec(.)com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039 XXX Sioux

Sioux, I take on board all you say about that (AOL).........and would like to echo....have you tried to get rid of Norton? I uninstalled it some time ago, but there is STILL a core program that jumps in and says it cant scan the file because parts of norton are missing.............I KNOW, I want RID!!! LOL Bob

A O L are terrible to sign off from.and has cost me a lot of money and a few arguements on the telephone to someone i could hardly understand,am now with B T. hopefully it will be better

The clue is in the name....AOL AMERICA ON LINE AOL was designed for American telphone networks... Namely Bell !! It simply isn't fully compatible with the european networks, which is why everyone has so many problems with connections. Added to the fact they restrict the pages you can access on the net! (Censorship in the highest degree) And it takes over your computer burying files hither and thither making it impossible to remove fully without formatting your machine. It's also nigh on impossible to get anyone on the extortionately highly priced help lines who you can understand who knows one ounce of technical knowledge to be able to help you. And when you decide you've finally taken as much as you can stand, you try unsubscribing from them ...... ROFLMAO !!! BT may have their faults but I thank god the day they brought broadband to our wee home. XXX Sioux

Hi Lilly, sorry to hear thatt I didnt like the way that ' 9' was trying to take over all my facilities, so I reverted to '8' I dont get cut off often, but I did get recently, messages from them that they are altering things around..in a supposed upgrade to the connections....Bob

Then you are lucky Bob!!l lol, I am on version 9 but it can take up to five minutes, and how many times do I get cut off, grrrrrr, especially after I have just written a extra long email and I am just reading it though when I get disconnected....''sorry there is a problem with your software' MY SOFTWARE I don't think so...why can't they sort their selfs out, they charge enough,..........Lilly

Roughly, how long does it take for your connection to complete. from hitting the Aol Icon to getting your mail page? sometimes mine seems to take two minutes or more.... I am still on Version 8... Bob