Two of my favorite whipping horses, but today I want to provide some information to help AOL users who might be moving to Windows Vista. I discovered today that a standard AOL disk will NOT work in Windows Vista. Most disks available at your local retailers or that you may have received via US Mail were minted in 2005 or earlier. That was the last time a major revision of AOL was released. Unfortunately, this version is not compatible with Windows Vista. 

If you are planning to upgrade to AOL and want to continue to use the AOL software, you will need to download the AOL version called AOL 9.0 VR [1] . It can be found at this link [2] , but you MUST download it on a computer with a high speed connection then copy it to a CD or flash drive and take it back to your new computer. 

One other snafu...when you use the link above, it copies only a download starter that is less than one megabyte. This won't help you on your new computer. You need to double-click on that little file it downloaded and start the next step of the download, a screen will show up that indicates that the download is starting and its progress. The download is nearly 60 megabytes and will take up to 20 minutes on some high speed connections...an impossible download using dial up. 

Once the download finishes, AOL will attempt to install the product. Simply click cancel and then navigate to this location on your computer:   C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL Downloads\waol  and copy that entire folder to a CD or flash drive. When you open the disk on your new computer, look for the file named "waol-0.4327.165.1" and double-click on it to install the new version on your PC.

A lot of work, but it will at least get your AOL working on Vista. Is it worth all this effort to use an inferior and out-dated Internet service? 

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