Uninstall AOL?

Well.. I'm configuring my Dad's new computer for school.. And as we all know, it came pre-bundled with god knows how many useless programs..

Including AOL 9.0. When I try to uninstall it, however, it opens AOL, searches, and says it can't find a version of AOL to uninstall.

What kind of crappy program is this? Are they really that desperate to try to overtake everyones computer that they make it this difficult to remove?

This "AOL Cleaner" proggy might help you out:
http://www.mrtech.com/aolcleaner.exe

The thread that it's from:
http://www.mrtech.com/cgi-local/msgboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=11&t=164;st=0

I hate AOL for the exact reasons you're going through. Good luck.

Most likely its an integrated built-in to prompt you to sign up for the crap. Never used AOL cleaner, but try this;
Go into the registry(make a backup before you do anything, just in case), and under the Edit tab, use Find for AOL. Start deleting what you find. Be aware that there are probably a ton of files, and that some are probably harmless.
After that, do a search for AOL from your Start menu. Be careful deleting here, because a lot of programs incorporate AOL items for general compatibilty, but get rid of what you can.
From the Start menu, Run MSConfig, and see if any AOL items are in your Startup. Regedit may have gotten rid of them, but if any are left, make sure they are unchecked

CCleaner, X-Cleaner or a program simliar to that might be able to do it at least adequately. I also have had good experiences with a free trial of a program called: Your Uninstaller. AOL is one of the most entrenched programs out there, so the likelihood is that you'll have pieces left over at which point you can use some of the other methods already listed to pick up the pieces.

Sadly its probably easier and better to just format. I set up a new dell a few months back and it took longer to remove everything than it would have taken to reinstall.

Ebola said:

Sadly its probably easier and better to just format. I set up a new dell a few months back and it took longer to remove everything than it would have taken to reinstall.

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I have to agree with Ebola, especially as involves Aol. A reformat is faster then any sort of repair you could do and almost guaranteed to work vs. other methods which may take hours and leave you with traces of the program for days, weeks and months. Aol is annoying that way. Just save any important documents you have on a Gmail account or something like that before you attempt it and if you're not sure how to reinstall there are plenty of threads on the forum dealing with just that.

Ebola said:

Sadly its probably easier and better to just format. I set up a new dell a few months back and it took longer to remove everything than it would have taken to reinstall.

Click to expand...

Ditto. Also, since it is a new computer he probably doesn't have much stuff that is important anyway. So there won't be much hassle with the backing up and everything.

However, before you do reformat I would download the drivers from Dells site and then burn them onto a CD or something.

If you're going to reformat, you might as well split the hard drive into 2 partitions - give Windows 15GB-20GB, and use the rest to store your music/videos/docs/etc. Link the "My Documents" folder to your music/vids/docs/etc partition, then you won't have to worry so much about backing up the system when you do a clean install of Windows again.